they purge their families of ungodly servants, and imitate. David, (Psalm ci,) that would not let the wicked dwell in his sight; should they spend the Lord's days in as serious endeavours for the spiritual benefit of their families and themselves, as poor men do that fear the Lord, what wonders of piety would they seem!

3. In their entertainments, visitations, and converse, how rare is serious, holy conference among them! How seldom do you hear them remembering their guests and companions of the presence of the Holy God, of the necessity of renewing, confirming, and assisting grace; of the riches of Christ revealed in the gospel; of the endless life of joy or misery which is at hand. How seldom do you hear them seriously assisting each other in the examining of their hearts, and making their calling and election sure, and preparing for the day of death and judgment! A word or two in private with some zealous minister or friend, is almost all the pious conference that shall be heard from some of the better sort of them. Should they discourse as seriously of the life to come, and the preparation necessary thereto, as they do about the matters of this life, they would mar the mirth and damp the pleasure of the company, and be taken for self-conceited hypocrites, or men of an unnecessary strictness and austerity, inconsistent with the jocund lepidity and sensual kind of delight wherewith they expect to be entertained. The honest, heart-warming, heavenly discourse that is usual among poor serious Christians, would seem, at the tables of most of our great ones, but an unseasonable interruption of their more natural and acceptable kind of converse.

4. What men do more carelessly cast away their precious time than these Dives do? They think they have a license to be idle and unprofitable, because they are rich; that is, to abuse or hide their talents, because they have more than other men; forgetting that, to whom much is given, of them shall much be required. Because they have no poverty or family necessities to constrain them to a laborious life, they think they may lawfully take their ease, and live as drones on other men's labours, as if they owed nothing to God or the commonwealth, but all to their own flesh. Their morning hours, which are most seasonable for meditation, and holy addresses unto God, and the works of their calling, are, perhaps, consumed in excess of sleep: the next are wasted in long attiring and curious adorning of their flesh; from thence they pass to vain discourse, to needless recreations, to eating and drinking, and so to their vain talk and

recreations again, and thence to the replenishing of their bellies, and so to sleep and thus the words of the fool, that Christ describeth in Luke xii. 19, are turned by them into deeds, and it is the language of their sensual lives; "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Sleeping and sporting, and jesting, and idle talking, and eating and drinking, and dressing and undressing, with worldly cares and passions intermixed, are the very business and employment of their lives. Thus contemptuously do they waste their precious hours, while God stands by, and time makes haste, and death draws near, and their miserable souls are unprepared, and heaven or hell are hard at hand; and this is all the time of preparation that ever shall be allowed them. O do but look on these distracted, piteous souls that have but a short, uncertain life to provide for a life that hath no end, and see how they forget or senselessly remember the matters of infinite concernment! See how they trifle away that time that never will return! How they sport and prate away those hours which shortly they would recal, were it possible, with the loudest cries, or recover with the dearest price! When they know not but, in a laughter, or a merry jest, their breath may be stopped by an arrest from heaven; or justice may surprise their miserable, unready souls with the cards in their hands, or the cup at their mouths, when they have not the least assurance of being out of hell an hour, and yet can sell this time for nothing, and basely cast it away on toys, which is all that ever they shall have to prevent everlasting misery, or to procure everlasting joy. Stand by a while, and hearken to the discourse of sensual gallants, and mark how days and weeks are spent, and then tell whether the prosperity of such fools be not made the occasion of befooling and destroying them?

5. What men in the world do live so sensual a life as rich and prosperous worldlings live? the difference between the sanctified and the unsanctified, the children of God and of thre devil, is, that one of them liveth after the Spirit, and the other liveth after the flesh, as in Romans viii. to ver. 14, you may read at large. And how few of these Dives do think the damning sin of flesh-pleasing to be any sin in them at all? If they do not eat till they are sick, or drink till they are drunk, their consciences scarce control them in their voluptuousness: they never well understood the meaning of such passages as these; (Rom. xiii. 14;) "Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the (desires or) lusts thereof." (Rom. viii. 13.) "If ye live after the

flesh ye shall die." (1 Cor. ix. 27.) "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection," &c. They understand not how far the flesh is their enemy; or else (as they have verbally renounced it) they would use it as an enemy.

6. In their prosperity these fools have not the wit to love or bear the means of their preservation or recovery, They have the sorest maladies, and are most impatient of the remedies. They are in the stream of temptations, and have greater need of help than others; and yet there is none that reject it with more contempt and pride, Plain-dealing preachers, which honest humble souls delight in, do seem intolerable saucy fellows to these sons of pride. If we tell them but of the sin that God hath most plainly condemned in his word, or of the judgment which he hath there denounced, and make the most prudent and modest application of it unto them, we seem to wrong them, and stir up their pride and enmity against us, and provoke them to slanderous recriminations, or revenge. It troubles them not to commit it, or to keep it, but to hear of it; and they take us to be more faulty for admonishing them of it, than themselves for being guilty of it. Though we are by office the messengers of Christ, that will tell them of it shortly to their faces, and fear not the proudest son of Belial, yet are they too stout to be admonished by such as we, but reject our message with hatred and disdain. And, indeed, it is a wonder of mercy that the prevalency of this impatient guilt and malice hath not, ere this, turned plain and faithful preaching into some toothless formalities, or homilies, and silenced the preachers for the security of the offenders; and expelled the physicians lest they displease the sick. The Lord still prevent it. If we tell them with the greatest caution but of the necessary truths, without which a sinful soul is never like to be humbled or saved, we are taken to be turbulent, and injurious to the ease or honour of these auditors. They must hear of the necessity of regeneration and holiness, and of the weight and worth of things eternal, and yet they cannot bear to hear it. They must have heartsearching and heart-breaking truths, in a searching, awakening manner, brought home to them, if ever they will be saved by them; but they cannot endure it. The surgeon is intolerable that would search their sores; and yet there is no other way to heal them. Alas! the heart of man is so hard, that all the skill and industry of the preacher can scarce sufficiently sharpen and set home the truth that it may enter; but nothing that is sharp can be endured by these tender souls. Such language as Christ

and his prophets and apostles used, doth seem too rough for silken ears. Their honour must not be blotted with the mention of their odious sins, and deplorable misery. To be a glutton, or a drunkard, or a wanton, or a filthy fornicator, or a malicious Cain, they can endure; but to be told, "Thou art the man," though it be in secret, and with love and tenderness, they cannot bear. The minister is thought to wrong them that shall secretly and faithfully admonish them, and tell them truly what will be the end: but Christ will execute all his threatenings, and make them feel what now they hear, and yet constrain them to confess that he doth not wrong them. We wrong them now, if we tell a gentleman of his impiety, and sensuality, and pride, and of his vilifying precious time, and casting it away on cards, and idleness, and unprofitable talk; yea, though he be so far forsaken of common grace and reason, as to hate and deride the serious practice of his own profession, and the way that the God of heaven hath prescribed as flatly necessary to salvation, yet cannot he endure to hear of his enmity against the Lord, nor to be told that he beareth the image of the devil, while he is against the image and laws of Christ. Should we but privately read a text to them that condemneth them, they are as angry with us as if we made the Scripture which we read; and it were not the word of God, but ours. If we tell them that "Without holiness none shall see God," (Heb. xii. 14,) and that "Except they be regenerated, converted, and become as little children (in humility beginning the world anew) they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven," (Matt. xviii. 3; John iii. 3. 5, 6,) that "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his," (Rom. viii. 6,) or that "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge,” (Heb. xiii, 4,) and that "The unrighteous, the fornicators, effeminate, covetous, extortioners, drunkards, or revilers, shall not inherit the kingdom of God," (1 Cor. vi. 9-11; Eph. v. 3—6,) they think we talk too precisely or presumptuously to them. You would think by their proud contempt of his threatenings, and their boldness and carelessness in sin, that these silk-worms did imagine that they had conquered heaven, and the Righteous God were afraid to meddle with them; or that he would reverse his laws, and pervert his judgment for fear of dishonouring or offending them. Little do they think how many Dives are now in hell. But methinks they might easily believe, that their honourable flesh is rotten, and turned to common earth; and

death will make bold to tell them, also, when their turn is come, that they have been pampering but a piece of clay; and that it was not worth the loss of heaven, not the suffering of hell, to spend so much time, and care, and cost, to feed up a carcass for the worms. We must now submissively ask their leave, to tell them what God hath said against them. But God will not ask them leave to make it good upon the highest, the proudest, and most secure of them all; "For God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses." (Psalm lxviii. 21.) "He is not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; neither shall evil dwell with him. The foolish shall not stand in his sight; he hateth all the workers of iniquity." (Psalm v. 3, 4.) The ungodly (that delight not in the law of the Lord) are like the chaff that the wind driveth away; they shall sit not in judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous." (Psalm i.) "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Psalm ix. 17.) Cannot you endure to hear and consider of these things? How then will you endure to feel them? God will not flatter you. If all your greatness enable you not to repulse the assaults of death, nor to chide away the gout or stone; and all your honour and wealth will not cure a fever, or ease you of the toothach; how little will it do to save you from the everlasting wrath of God! or to avert his sentence which must shortly pass on all that are impenitent! And yet prosperity so befooleth sensual men, that they must hear of none of this; at least not with any close and personal application. If you speak as Christ did to the Pharisees, (Matt. xxi. 45,) that they perceived that he spake of them, they take you for their enemy for telling them the truth, (Gal. iv. 16,) and meet our doctrine as Ahab did Elijah (2 Kings xxi. 20,) "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy !" and, (1 Kings xviii. 17,) "Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" or as the same Ahab of Micaiah, (1 Kings xxii. 8,) "There is one man (Micaiah) of whom we may inquire of the Lord; But I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." Or as Amaziah the priest said of Amos to King Jeroboam, "He hath conspired against thee; the land is not able to bear all his words." (Amos vii. 10, 13.) "Prophesy not again any more at Bethel; for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court." They behave themselves to faithful ministers as if it were a part of their inviolable honour and privilege, to be mortally sick without the trouble of a physician, and to have