I Humbly beseech you, both in respect of the honour of God, your duty to his Church, and the comfort of your own soul, that you se­riously consider in what tearms you stand; and weigh your self in a Chri­stian ballance, taking for your coun­terpoise the judgements of God: Take heed in time that the word TEKEL, [Page 2]written of old against Balthazar, and interpreted by Daniel, be not verified in you, whose exposition was, You have been poized in the scale, and found of too light weight.

Remember that you are now in the weining, and the date of your pil­grimage well nigh expired, and now that it behoveth you to look towards your Countrey, your forces languish­eth, your senses impair, your bodie droops, and on every side the ruinous Cottage of your faint and feeble flesh, threateneth the fall. And having so many harbingers of death to premo­nish you of your end, how can you but prepare for so dreadfull a stranger. The young man may die quickly, but the old man cannot live long: the young mans life by casualty may be a­bridged, but the old mans by no phy­sick can be long adjourned, and there­fore if green years should sometimes think of the grave, the thoughts of old age should continually dwell in the same.

The prerogative of Infancy is in­nocency; of Child-hood, reverence; of Man-hood, maturity; and of old age, wisdom.

[Page 3] And seeing then that the chiefest properties of wisdom, are to be mind­full of things past, carefull for things present, and provident for things to come: Use now the priviledge of na­tures tallent, to the benefit of your own soul, and procure hereafter to be wise in well doing, and watchfull in the fore-sight of future harms. To serve the world you are now unable, and though you were able, yet you have little cause to be willing, seeing that it never gave you but an unhappy welcome, a hurtfull entertainment, and now doth abandon you with an unfor­tunate fare-wel.

You have long sowed in a field of flint, which could bring nothing forth but a crop of cares, and afflictions of spirit, rewarding your labours with re­morse, and affording for your gain, eter­nal danger.

It is now more than a seasonable time to alter the course of so unthri­ving a husbandry, and to enter into the field of Gods Church, in which, sowing the seed of repentant sorrow, and watering them with the tears of humble contrition, you may hereafter reap a more beneficial harvest, and ga­ther [Page 4]the fruits of everlasting com­fort.

Remember, I pray you, that your spring is spent, your summer over-past, you are now arrived at the fall of the leaf; yea, and winter colours have long since stained your hoary head.

Be not careless (saith Saint Augu­stine) though our loving Lord bear long with offenders; for the longer he stayes, not finding amendment, the sorer he will scourge when he comes to Judgement: And his patience in so long forbearing, is onely to lend us respite to repent, and not any wise to enlarge us leisure to sin.

He that is tossed with variety of storms, and cannot come to his desi­red Port, maketh not much way, but is much turmoyled; So, he that hath passed many years, and purchased little profit, hath a long being, but a short life; For, life is more to be measured by well doing, than by number of years: Seeing that most men by many days do but procure many deaths, and others in short space attain to the life of infinite ages; what is the body without the soul, but a corrupt car­kass? And what is the soul without [Page 5]God, but a sepulchre of sin?

If God be the Way, the Life, and the Truth, he that goeth without him, strayeth; and he that liveth without him, dieth; and he that is not taught by him, erreth.

Well (saith Saint Augustine) God is our true and chiefest Life, from whom to revolt, is to fall; to whom to return, is to rise, and in whom to stay, is to stand sure.

God is he, from whom to depart, is to die; to whom to repair, is to revive; and in whom to dwell, is life for ever: Be not then of the number of those that begin not to live, till they be ready to die: and then after a foes de­sert, come to crave of God a friends entertainment.

Some there be that think to snatch Heaven in a moment, which the best can scarce attain unto in the maintain­ance of many years, and when they have glutted themselves with worldly delights, would jump from Dives Diet, to Lazarus Crown, from the service of Satan, to the solace of a Saint.

But be you well assured, that God is not so penurious of friends, as to hold himself and his Kingdom sale­albe [Page 6]for the refuse and reversions of their lives, who have sacrificed the principal thereof to his enemies, and their own bruitish lust; then onely ceasing to offend, when the ability of offending is taken from them.

True it is, that a thief may be saved upon the cross, and mercy sound at the last gasp: But well (saith S. Au­gustine) though it be possible, yet it is scarce credible, that the d [...]ath should find favour, whose whole life deserved death; and that the repentance should be more excepted, that more for fear of hell, and love of himself, than for the love of God, and loathsomness of sin cri­eth for mercy.

Wherefore, good SIR, make no longer delays; but being so near the breaking up of your mortal house, take time before extremity, to pacifie Gods anger.

Though you suffer the bud to be blasted, though you permitted the fruits to be perished, and the leaves to drie up; yea, though you let the boughs to wither, and the body of your tree to grow to decay, yet (alas) keep life in the root, for fear lest the whole tree become fewel for hell fire; [Page 7]For surely where the tree falleth, there it shall lie, whether towards the South, or to the North, to Heaven, or to hell; and such sap as it bringeth forth, such fruit shall it ever bear.

Death hath already filed from you the better part of your natural forces, and left you now to the Lees, and re­missals of your wearyish and dying days.

The remainder whereof, as it can­not be long, so doth it warn you spee­dily to ransom your former losses; for what is age, but the Calends of death, & what importeth your present weak­ness, but an earnest of your approch­ing dissolution, you are now imbark­ed in your final voyage, and not far from the stint and period of your course.

Be not therefore unprovided of such appurtenances as are behovefull in so perplexed and perilous a Journey; death it self is very fearfull, but much more terrible, in respect of the judge­ment it summoneth us unto.

If you were now laid upon your de­parting-bed, burthened with the hea­vie load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a fe­stered [Page 8]Conscience; if you felt the cramp of death wresting your heart-strings, and ready to make the ruefull divorce between body and soul: If you lay panting for breath, and swimming in a cold and pale sweat, wearied with strugling against your deadly pangs, O what would you give for an hours re­pentance; at what rate would you va­lue a days contrition? Then worlds would be worth less in respect of a little respite, a short truce would seem more precious than the treasures of an Empire, nothing would be so much esteemed as a short trice of time, which now by days, and moneths, and years, is most lavishly misspent.

Oh how deeply would it wound your woefull heart, when looking back into your former life, you considered many hainous and horrible offences committed, many pious works, and godly deeds omitted, and neither of both repented, your service to God promised, and not performed.

Oh how unconsolably were your case, your friends being fled, your sen­ses affrighted, your thoughts amazed, your memory decayed, and your whole mind agast, and no part able to per­form [Page 9]what it should; but onely your guilty Conscience pestered with sin, that would continually upbraid you with many bitter accusations.

Oh what would you think then, be­ing stripped out of this mortal weed, and turned out both of service and house-room of this wicked world, you are forced to enter into uncough and strange paths, and with unknown and ugly company, to be convented be­fore a most severe Judge, carrying in your Conscience your Inditement, written in a perfect Register of all your misdeeds, when you shall see him pre­pared to give sentence upon you, a­gainst whom you have so often trans­gressed, and the same to be your Um­pire, whom by so many offences you have made your enemies, when not onely the Devil, but even the Angels would plead against you, and your own self, in despight of your self, be your own most sharp appeacher.

Oh what would you do in these dreadfull exigents, when you saw the ghastly Dragon, and huge gulph of hell, breaking out with most fearfull flames, when you heard the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth; the [Page 10]rage of those hellish monsters, the horrour of the place, the terrour of the company, and the eternity of all those torments.

Would you then think them wise that should delay in so weighty mat­ters, and idlely play away the time al­lotted, to prevent these intolerable ca­lamities? Would you then count it secure, to nurse in your own bosom so many Serpents as sins? and to foster in your souls so many malicious Accu­sers, as mortal and horrible offences? Would you not think one life too lit­tle to repent in, for so many, and so great iniquities, every one whereof were enough to throw you into those unspeakable and intolerable torments.

And why then (alas) do you not at the least devote that small remnant, and surplusage of these your latter days, procuring to make an atone­ment with God, and to free your Soul and Conscience from that corru­ption, which by your fall hath crept into it.

Those very eyes that behold, and read this Discourse, those very ears that are attentive to hear it, and that very understanding that considereth [Page 11]and conceiveth it, shall be cited as certain witnesses of these rehearsed things. In your own body shall you experience these deadly Agonies, and in your soul shall you feelingly find these terrible fears; yea, and your pre­sent estate, is in danger of the deepest harms, if you do not the sooner re­cover your self into that fold and fami­ly of Gods faithfull servants.

What have you gotten by being so long a customer to the world, but false ware, suitable to the shop of such a merchant, whose traffique is toyl, whose wealth is trash, and whose gain is miserie? What interest have you reaped, that might equal your detri­ment in grace and virtue? Or what could you find in the vale of tears, that was answerable to the favour of God, with loss whereof, you were con­tented to buy it.

You cannot now be inveigled with the passions of youth, which making a partiality of things, sets no distance between counterfeit and currant, for these are now worn out of force, by tract of time are fallen into reproof by trial of their folly.

Oh let not the crazie cowardness of [Page 12]flesh and bloud, daunt the prowess of an intelligent person, who by his wis­dom cannot but discern how much more cause there is, and how much more needfull it is to serve God, than this wicked world.

But if it be the ungrounded pre­sumption of the mercy of God, and the hope of his assistance at the last plunge (which indeed is the ordinary lure of the devil) to reclaim sinners from the pursuit of Repentance. Alas, that is too palpable a collusion to mis­lead a sound and serviceable man, how­soever it may prevail with sick and ill-affected judgements: who would re­ly upon eternal affairs, upon the glid­ing slipperiness, and running streams of our uncertain life? who, but one of distempered wits, would offer fraud to the Discipherer of all thoughts; with whom dissemble we may to our cost, but to deceive him, is unpossible.

Shall we esteem it cunning to rob the time from him, and bestow it on his enemies, who keepeth tale of the least minutes, and will examine in the end how every moment hath been im­ [...]loyed. It is a preposterous kind of [...]licie, in any wise conceit to fight [Page 13]against God, till our weapons be blunt­ed, our forces consumed, our limbs im­potent, and our best time spent; and then when we fall for faintness, and have fought our [...]elves almost dead, to presume on his mercy.

Oh! no, no, the wounds of his most sacred body, so often rubbed, and re­newed by our sins, and every part and parcel of our bodies so divers, and sun­dry ways abused, will be then as so many whet-stones and incentives, to edge and exasperate his most just re­venge against us.

It is a strange piece of Art, and a ve­ry exorbitant course, when the Ship is sound, the Pylot well, the Marriners strong, the Gale favourable, and the Sea calm, to lie idly at the road, burn­ing so seasonable weather: And when the Ship leaketh, the Pylot sick, the Marriners faint, the Storms boyster­ous, and the Seas a turmoyl of outra­gious Surges, then to launch forth, (hoise up sail) and set out for a long voyage into a far Countrey.

Yet such is the skill of these evening Repenters, who though in the sound­ness of their health, and perfect use of [...]heir reason, they cannot resolve to [Page 14]cut the Cables, and weigh the Anchour that with-holds them from God.

Nevertheless, they feed themselves with a strong perswasion, that when they are astonied, their wits distracted, the understanding dusked, and the bo­dies and souls wracked, and torment­ed with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness, then forsooth they will begin to think of their weightiest matters, and become sudden Saints, when they are scarce able to behave themselves like reasonable creatures.

No, no, if neither the Canon, Civil, nor the Common Law will allow that man (perished in judgement) should make any Testament of his temporal substance; How can he that is anima­ted with inward garboyls of an unset­led Conscience, distrained with the ringing sits of his dying flesh, maimed in all his ability, and circled in on eve­ry side with many and strange incum­berances, be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest Jewel, which is his Soul, and to dispatch the whole mannage of all eternity, and of the treasures of Heaven in so short a spurt.

No, no, they that will loyter in seed­time, and begin to sow when others [Page 15]reap; they that will riot out their health, and begin to cast their ac­counts when they are scarce able to speak; th [...]y that will slumber out the day, and enter their journey when the light doth fail them, let them blame their own folly, if they die in debt, and be eternal beggers, and fall head-long into the lap of endless perdition.

Let such listen to S. Cyprians lesson; Let, saith he, the gri [...]vousness of our sore be the measure of our sorrow; let a deep wound have a deep and diligent cure; Let no mans cont [...]ition be l [...]ss than his Crime.