442 LIFE OF FAITS, the things unseen, and animated by them. Love where you can never love too much ;' where you are sure to have no disappoint- ments; where there is no unkindness to eclipse or interrupt it; where the only error is, that God bath not all ; and the only, grief, that we love no more. Especially in the midst of your enticing pleasures, or enticing employments and profits in the world, foresee the end ; do all in faith, which telleth you, " The time is short; it remaineth, there- fore, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that re- joice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as though they used it not, (or not abusing it ;) for the fashion of this worldpass- eth away ; " 1 Cor. vii. 29, 30. 3. Employ your time as becomes believers. Faith,. only, can acquaint you, what an inconceivable weight doth lie upon this inch of hasty time. As you behave yourselves for a few days, it must go with you in joy or misery forever. You have your appointed time for your appointed work. God bath, turned the glass upon you : much of it is run out already. No price can call back one hour that you have lost. No power or policy can retard its course ; ' Sic fugiunt froeno non remorante dies. When it comes to the last sand, and time is gone, you will know the worth of it. You will then confess, it should have seemed more precious in your eyes than to have been cast away upon things. of nought. O, precious time ! more worth than all the, riches of the world ! how highly is it valued by all at last ! and how basely is it esteemed now by the most! Now, it is no more worth with them than to be sold for unnecessary sports and ease, and wasted in idleness and vain delights ; but then,' when it is gone, and all is too late, how loud would theycry, if cries could call back time again ! O, then, what a mercywould it seem, if God wouldtry them once again ! and' trust them but with another life, or with Hezekiah's fifteen years! or but with fifteen days, or hours, upon such.terms of grace as they held that life which they abused ! It amazeth me to observe the lamentable stupidity of the world, how hard they beg for time when they think it is near an end; and how carelessly they let it slide 'away, when they have strength and faculties to improve it. They are grievously afraid lest death 'deprive them of it; and yet they are not afraid to deprive themselves of the use and fruit of it, and to cast it away as contemptuously as if it were an. useless thing. I seldom come near a dying man, but I hear hitp complain of the loss of time, and wish it were to spend again, that it might be better valued and used. And yet the-living will not be warned. O, value time, as wise men, while you have it; and not
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