we are conversant; disposing us consequently to moderate our affections, and rightly to guide our actions about them; fitting us therefore for the performance of those duties so often enjoined us; of not caring for, nor trusting in, not minding (unduly that is, and immoderately) things below; of dying to this world, and taking up our cross, or contentedly suffering, in submission to God's will, all loss and inconvenience; as also to the placing our meditation and care, our love and desire, our hope and confidence, our joy and satisfaction, our most earnest pains and endeavors, on things divine, spiritual, and eternal.

IV. I proceed to another general benefit of that general consideration; which is, that it may engage us to a good improvement of our time; the doing which is a very considerable piece of wisdom. For if time be, as Theophrastus called it truly, a thing of most precious value,' (or expense,) as it were a great folly to lavish it away unprofitably; so to be frugal thereof, and careful to lay it out for the best advantage, especially every man having so little store thereof, must be a special point of prudence. To be covetous of time (Seneca tells us) is a commendable avarice;' it being necessary for the accomplishment of any worthy enterprise; there being nothing excellent, that can soon or easily be effected. Surely he that hath much and great business to dispatch, and but a little time allowed for it, is concerned to husband it well; not to lose it wholly in idleness; not to trifle it away in unnecessary divertisements; not to put himself on other impertinent affairs; above all, not to create obstacles to himself, by pursuing matters of a tendency quite contrary to the success of his main undertakings. It is our case; we are obliged here to negociate in business of infinite price and consequence to us; no less than the salvation of our souls, and eternal happiness and we see that our time to drive it on and bring it to a happy issue is very scant and short; short in itself, and very short in respect to the nature of those affairs; the great variety and the great difficulty of them. The great father of physicians did quicken the students of that faculty to diligence, by admonishing them (in the first place, setting it in the front of his famous aphorisms) that life is short, and art is long.' And how much

more so is the art of living well, (that most excellent and most necessary art for indeed virtue is not a gift of nature, but a work of art; an effect of labor and study :) this, I say, most needful and useful art of living virtuously and piously; this art of spiritual physic, (of preserving and recovering our souls' health,) how much longer is it? how many rules are to be learnt? how many precepts to be observed in order thereto? We are bound to furnish our minds with needful knowlege of God's will and our duty; we are to bend our unwilling wills to a ready compliance with them; we are to adorn our souls with dispositions suitable to the future state, (such as may qualify us for the presence of God, and conversation with the blessed spirits above ;) it is incumbent on us to mortify corrupt desires, to restrain inordinate passions, to subdue natural propensities, to extirpate vicious habits; in order to the effecting these things, to use all fit means; devotion toward God, study of his law, reflexion on our actions, with all such spiritual instruments; the performing which duties, as it doth require great care and pains, so it needs much time; all this is not dictum factum, as soon done as said: a few spare minutes will not suffice to accomplish it. Natural inclination, that wild beast within us, will not so presently be tamed and made tractable by us. Ill habits cannot be removed without much exercise and attendance; as they were begot, so they must be destroyed, by a constant succession, and frequency of acts. Fleshly lust is not to be killed with a stab or two; it will fight stoutly, and rebel often, and hold out long, before with our utmost endeavor we can obtain an intire victory over it. No virtue is acquired in an instant, but by degrees, step by step; from the seeds of right instruction and good resolution it springs up and grows forward by a continual progress of customary practice; it is a child of patience, a fruit of perseverance, that vroμový čpyov ȧyatov, 'enduring in doing well,' St. Paul speaks of, and consequently a work of time; for enduring implies a good space of time. Having therefore so much to do, and of so great concernment, and so little a portion of time for it, it behoves us to be careful in the improvement of what time is allowed us; to embrace all opportunities and advantages offered; to go the nearest way, to use the best compendiums in the transaction of our business;

not to be slothful and negligent, but active and intent about it; (for as time is diminished, and in part lost by sloth or slackness; so it is enlarged, and, as it were, multiplied by industry; my day is two in respect of his, who doeth but half my work :) not, also, to consume our time in fruitless pastimes, and curious entertainments of fancy; being idly busy about impertinences and trifles; (we call it sport, but it is a serious damage to us ;) not to immerse ourselves in multiplicities of needless care about secular matters, which may distract us, and bereave us of fit leisure for our great employment; that which our Saviour calls τυρβάζεσθαι περὶ πολλὰ, to keep a great deal of do and stir (to be jumbled about as it were, and confounded) about many things ; and, περισπᾶσθαι περὶ πολλὴν διακονίαν, to be distracted and perplexed about much cumbersome service; which St. Paul calls περιπλέκεσθαι ταῖς τοῦ βίου πραγματείαις, to be implicated and entangled, as in a net, with the negociations of this present life so that we shall not be expedite, or free to bestir ourselves about our more weighty affairs. The spending much. time about those things doth steal it from these; yea doth more than so, by discomposing our minds so that we cannot well employ what time remains on our spiritual concernments. But especially we should not prostitute our time on vicious projects and practices; doing which is not only a prodigality of the present time, but an abridgment of the future; it not only doth not promote or set forward our business, but brings it backward, and makes us more work than we had before; it is a going in a way directly contrary to our journey's end. The Scripture aptly resembles our life to a wayfaring, a condition of travel and pilgrimage: now he that hath a long journey to make, and but a little time of day to pass it in, must in reason strive to set out soon, and then to make good speed; must proceed on directly, making no stops or deflections, (not calling in at every sign that invites him, nor standing to gaze at every object seeming new or strange to him; not staying to talk with every passenger that meets him; but rather avoiding all occasions of diversion and delay,) lest he be surprised by the night, be left to wander in the dark, be excluded finally from the place whither he tends: so must we, in our course toward heaven and happiness, take care that we set out soon, (procras

tinating no time, but beginning instantly to insist in the ways of piety and virtue,) then proceed on speedily, and persist constantly; nowhere staying or loitering, shunning all impediments and avocations from our progress, lest we never arrive near, or come too late unto the gate of heaven. St. Peter tells us that the end of all things doth approach, and thereon advises us to be sober, and to watch unto prayer;' for that the less our time is, the more intent and industrious it concerns us to be. And St. Paul enjoins us to 'redeem the time, because the days are evil;' that is, since we can enjoy no true quiet or comfort here, we should improve our time to the best advantage for the future: he might have also adjoined, with the patriarch Jacob, the paucity of the days to their badness; because the days of our life are few and evil,' let us redeem the time; man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble:' so few indeed they are, that it is fit we should lose none of them, but use them all in preparation toward that great change we are to make; that fatal passage out of this strait time into that boundless eternity. So, it seems, we have Job's example of doing; All the days,' says he, of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.' I end this point with that so comprehensive warning of our Saviour: Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come on you unawares. Watch ye therefore, and pray, that ye may be counted worthy to escape—and to stand before the Son of man.'

V. I shall adjoin but one use more, to which this consideration may be subservient, which is, that it may help to beget and maintain in us (that which is the very heart and soul of all goodness) sincerity: sincerity in all kinds, in our thoughts, words, and actions. To keep us from harboring in our breasts such thoughts, as we would be afraid or ashamed to own; from speaking otherwise than we mean, than we intend to do, than we are ready any where openly to avow; from endeavoring to seem what we are not; from being one thing in our expressions and conversations with men; another in our hearts, or in our closets from acting with oblique respects to private interests or passions, to human favor or censure; (in matters, I mean,

where duty doth intervene, and where pure conscience ought o guide and govern us ;) from making professions and ostentaions, (void of substance, of truth, of knowlege, of good purose,) great semblances of peculiar sanctimony, integrity, scruulosity, spirituality, refinedness, like those pharisees so often herefore taxed in the gospel; as also from palliating, as those nen did, designs of ambition, avarice, envy, animosity, revenge, perverse humor, with pretences of zeal and conscience. We should indeed strive to be good (and that in all real strictness, aiming at utmost perfection) in outward act and appearance, as well as in heart and reality, for the glory of God and example of men, (providing things honest in the sight of all men ;') but we must not shine with a false lustre, nor care to seem better than we are, nor intend to serve ourselves in seeming to serve God; bartering spiritual commodities for our own glory or gain. For since the day approaches when God will judge (TÀ KρVπTÀ ÁVŮρúπwv) the things men do so studiously conceal;' when God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil;' since we must all appear (or rather be all made apparent, be manifested and discovered) at the tribunal of Christ:' since there is nothing covered, which shall not be revealed, nor hid, that shall not be known; so that whatever is spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed on the housetops :' since at length, and that within a very short time, (no man knows how soon,) the whispers of every mouth (the closest murmurs of detraction, slander, and sycophantry) shall become audible to every ear; the abstrusest thoughts of all hearts (the closest malice and envy) shall be disclosed in the most public theatre before innumerable spectators; the truth of all pretences shall be thoroughly examined; the just merit of every person and every cause shall with a most exact scrutiny be scanned openly in the face of all the world; to what purpose can it be to juggle and baffle for a time; for a few days (perhaps for a few minutes) to abuse or to amuse those about us with crafty dissimulation or deceit? Is it worth the pains to devise plausible shifts, which shall instantly, we know, be detected and defeated; to bedaub foul designs with a fair varnish, which death will presently wipe off; to be dark and cloudy in our proceedings,