your enemy, or for a hindrance to you in the way to heaven?' If you do not, why did you in your baptism renounce it, and promise to fight against it? And why have you professed since to stand to that covenant? And how then can you believe the word of God, which so often telleth you, what a hindrance riches and honours are to men's salvation? But if indeed you believe that the world is your enemy and hindrance, why then will you love it, and be impatient if you want it, and take such pleasure in it, and desire to have more of it? Do you love to have your salvation hindered or hazarded? and will you love and long for that which is an enemy to it? I think the way to heaven is hard enough to the best: they need not make it harder than it is, and be at so much labour all their lives to make themselves more enemies, and more work, and to block up the way, while they pretend to walk in it. O the hypocrisy of a carnal heart! How notoriously do men's lives contradict their tongues! When they will call the world their enemy, and vow to fight against it to the death, and at the same time will labour for it, and greedily desire it, as if they could never have enough! That they will make so much of it, as to neglect God himself, and their salvation for it, and make it the greatest care and business of their lives to get and keep it, and all the while profess that they take it for their enemy! This is dissembling beyond all bounds of shame. Remember this when you are impatient of your low estate; or contriving further accommodation to your flesh, or hunting after a full estate. Are these the signs of enmity to the world? Do you hate your salvation, that you so love the hinderers of it? Either live as you profess, or profess as you live.

Quest. 11. Yet further I demand, Whether indeed you do intend to renounce your Christianity, and all your hopes of heaven, or not?' If you do, you know whom to blame when you are deprived of it; and I could wish you would first find out some better way, or something that may be of valuable consideration, to repair your loss. But if you say, you have no such intent, I further ask, Why then do you do it? and do it after so much warning? Do you disclaim your Christianity in the open light, and yet say that you intend no such thing? You cannot do it against your will. And that it is in effect a renouncing or denying your Christianity,

yea, and your salvation, is plain; for your Christianity containeth a renouncing of the world; and therefore it is part of our baptismal covenant. If then you return to the world which you renounced, you forsake your Christianity. Had you rather forsake the world, or Christ? One of them you must forsake; for he hath told you that "except you forsake all that you have, you cannot be his disciples;” (Luke xiv.) and that you cannot serve God and mammon. Had you rather renounce the world, or your salvation? One of them you must let go; for God hath said, that "the love of the world is enmity against God;" and that, "if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." If therefore you will still say, you hope you may keep both; what do you less than give God the lie? If you will still adhere to the world, and yet say that you do not renounce your Christianity or salvation, you may as well say, that though you join in arms with open rebels, yet you do not forsake your loyalty to your prince! Or, though you live in adultery, yet you do not forsake your conjugal fidelity and chastity; and that you do not cast away your life, though you take poison, when you know it to be such, or though you commit those crimes which must be punished with death. I beseech you consider well, why you forsake Christ, and why you will destroy yourselves, before you da it past remedy.

Quest. 12. My last question which I desire your answer to is this; Do you indeed think that God is not better than the world, and that heaven is not more desirable than earth, and an endless glory than a transitory shadow?' Or is there any comparison to be made between them? Have you considered what a sad exchange you make? O unthankful souls! hath not God done more for you than ever the world did? He made you, and so did not the world! He redeemed you, when none else could do it! He preserveth you, and provideth for you, and all that you have is from his bounty. He can give health to your bodies, peace to your consciences, salvation to your souls, when the world cannot do it. If the world be better than God in prosperity, what makes you call upon God in adversity? When any torment seizeth on your bodies, or death draws near and looks you in the face, then you do not cry, 'O riches, help us! O pleasures or honours, have mercy upon us! But,

'O God, have mercy upon us and help us.' Can none else help you in your distress, and yet will you prefer the creature in your prosperity? Ah poor deluded souls! that follow the world, which will cast you off in your greatest need, and neglect Him that would be faithful to you for ever! The time is coming when you shall cry out, 'The world hath deceived me! I have laboured for naught!' But if you had been as true to God as you were to it, he would never have deceived you. He would have received your departed souls, and made you like angels, and raised your bodies to glory at the last, and perpetuated that glory. Will your riches, or pleasures, or honours do this? He would have rescued you from the devouring flames which your inordinate love of the world will bring you to. O miserable change! to change God for the world; it is to change a crown of glory for a crown of thorns; the love of our only friend, for the smiles of deceitful enemies; life for death, and heaven for hell! O what thoughts will arise in your hearts, when you are past the deceit, and under the sad effects of it, and shall review your folly in another world! It will fill your consciences with everlasting horror, and make you your own accusers and tormenters, to think what you lost, and what you had for it; to think that you sold God and your souls, and everlasting hopes for a thing of naught; more foolishly than Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. If the sun, and moon, and stars were yours, would you exchange them for a lump of clay.? Well, sinners! if God and glory seem no more worth to you, than to be slighted for a little fleshly pleasures, you cannot marvel if you have no`part in them.

If reason and Scripture evidence would serve turn, I dare say you would by this time be convinced of the necessity of being crucified to the world, and the world to you. But sensuality is unreasonable, and no saying will serve with it: like a child that will not let go his apple for a piece of gold. But yet I shall not cease my exhortation, till I have tried you a little further; and if you will not yield to forsake the world, you shall keep it to your greater cost, as you keep it against the clearer light that would convince you of your duty.

1. As you love God, or would be thought to love him, love not the world: for so far as you love it, you love not

him; 1 John ii. 15. As ever you would be found the friends of God, see that you be enemies, and not friends to the world. For the friendship of the world is enmity to him; James iv. 4. You are used to boast that you love God above all; if you do so you will not love the world above him: and then you will not labour and care more for it, than for him: your love will be seen in the bent of your lives: that which you love best, you will seek most, and be most careful and diligent to obtain. As they that love money are most careful to get it; so they that love heaven will be more careful to make sure of that. As they that love their drink and lust will be much in the alehouse, and among those that are the baits and fuel of their lust; so they that love the fruition of God will be much in seeking him and inquiring after him, and much among those that are acquainted with ́such love, and can further them any way in the accomplishment of their desires. If you love God then, let it be seen in the holy endeavours of your lives, and set your affections on things above, and not on the things that are on earth: for that which you most look after, we must think that you most love. Can you for shame commit adultery with the world, and live with it in your bosoms, and yet say that you love God?

2. As you love your present peace and comfort, see that you love not, but crucify the world. It doth but delude you first, and disquiet you afterwards; like wind in your bowels, which can tear and torment, but cannot nourish you. And if God do love you with a special love, he will be sure to wean you from the world, though to your sorrow. If you do provoke him to lay wormwood on the breasts, and to hedge up your forbidden way with thorns, when you find the smart and bitterness you may thank yourselves. It is the remnant of our folly and our backsliding nature, that is still looking back to the world which we have forsaken, that is the cause of those successive afflictions which we undergo. Did you love the creature less, it would vex you less; but if you will needs set your minds upon them, and be pleasing your worldly, sensual desires, God will turn loose those very creatures upon you, and make them his scourges for the recovery of your wits, and the reducing of your misled, revolting souls. Are you taken up with the hopes of a more plentiful estate; and think you are got into a thriving way?

How soon can God blast and break your expectations? By the death of your cattle, the decay of trading, the falsedealing of those you trust, the breaking and impoverishing of them, by contentious neighbours vexing you with lawsuits; by corrupted witnesses, or lawyers that will sell you for a little gain; by ill servants, by unthrifty children; by thieves, or soldiers, or the raging flames; by restraining the dew of heaven, and causing your land to deny its increase, and make you complain that you have laboured in vain. How many ways hath he in a day or an hour to scatter all the heap of wealth that you have been gathering, and to shew you that by sad experience, which you might have known before at easier rates! At the least, if he meddle not with any thing that you have, yet how quickly can he lay his hand upon yourselves, and lay you in sickness, to groan under your pain and sin together: and then what comfort will you have in the world? When head-aches, and back-aches, and nothing can ease you? when pain and languishing make you weary of day and night, and weary of every place, and weary of your best diet, your finest clothes, your merriest companions? Where then is the sweetness and beauty of the world? Then if you look on house, or goods, or lands, how little pleasure find you in any of them? Especially when you know that your departure is at hand, and you must stay here no longer, but presently must away. Oh then what a carcase will all the glory of the world appear! and how sensibly then will you read, or hear, or think of these things, that now in your prosperity are very little moved by the hearing of them!

Is it your children that you set your hearts upon, in inordinate love or care? Why, alas! how quickly can God call them from you by death! and then you will follow them to the churchyard, and lay them in the grave with so much the sadder heart, by how much the more inordinately you loved them. And perhaps God may leave them to be graceless and unnatural, and make that child, by rebellion or unkindness, to be the breaking of your heart, whom you most excessively affected. If it be a wife that you overlove, you know not but they may fall into that peevishness and forwardness, that jealousy or unkindness, that perverseness of tongue, or other distempers, that may make your lives a very burden to you! Do you look after the favour of great