TO A SOUND CONVERSION. 445 you will lose them, and let them run in waste; but you will do no good with them, nor take in any profit by them to yourselves. 6. Have you any thing that better deserves your consideration than God and your salvation? Certainly God hath more right to your thoughts, than any thing else you can place them on. Your flesh, your friends, your worldly business, are neither so honour- able, so necessary, or so profitable subjects, as God and heaven are. As there is more profit to be got by the tillage of fruitful land, than' barren heath ; or by digging in a mine ofgold, than in a clay pit ; so is there more pleasure and profit to be gotten in one hour's serious thoughts of your salvation, than in thinking all your life -time of the world. 7. At least methinks you should consider, how disproportionably and unequally you lay out your thoughts. Cannot you spare God the tenths ? no, nor the hundreth part of them ? Look back upon your lives, and trace your thoughts from day to day, and tell me how many hours in a week, in a month, in a year, you have spent in serious thoughts of the state of your souls, and of the life 'to come? Is it one hour of a hundred, of a thousand, of ten thousand, with some of you, that is thus spent? Nay, I have very great cause to fear, that there are some, yea, that there are many, yea, that there is far the greatest number, that never spent one hour since they were born in withdrawing. themselves purposely from all other busi- ness, and soberly, and in good sadness, bethinking themselves what case they are in, what evidence they have of their title to salvation, or how they must be justified at the bar of God no, nor what business they have in the world, and- to what end they were made, and how they have done the work that they were made for. Ah, sirs, doth Conscience justify you in this? or, rather, will it not torment you one day to remember it? Did thy land, and livings, and worldly matters, deserve all thy thoughts; and did not the saving of thy soul deserve some of them ? Did thy lusts, and sports, and wantonness, deserve all; and did
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