The Practice of Piety

how would I frequent the Church, and sanctify the Lords day. If Satan should offer me all the treasures, pleasures, and promotions of this world; he should never entice me to forget these terrors of this last dreadful hour. But O corrupt carcass, and stinking carrion! How hath the Devil deluded us: and how have we served and deceived each other? and pulled swift damnation upon us both? Now is my case more miserable then the ⟨p. 109⟩beast that perisheth in a ditch for I must go to answer, before the judgement seat, of the righteous Judge of heaven and earth: where I shall have none to speak for me: and these wicked fiends, who are privy to all my evil deeds, will accuse me, and I cannot excuse my self. My own heart already condemns me, I must needs therefore be damned before his judgment seat: and from thence be carried by these infernal fiends, into that horrible prison of endless torments, and utter darkness: where I shall never more see light, that first most excellent thing that God made. I who gloried heretofore, in being a libertine, am now enclosed in the ⟨p. 110⟩very claws of Satan: as the trembling Partridges within the griping talents of the ravenous Falcon. Where shall I logde to night? and who shall be my companions? Oh horror to think! Grief to consider! Oh cursed be the day wherein I was borne, & let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man that showed my Father, saying, a child is borne unto thee, and comforted him. Cursed be that man because he slew me not. Oh that my mother might have been my grave, or her womb a perpetual conception! How is it that I came forth of the womb to endure these hellish sorrows! and that my days should thus end with eternal ⟨p. 111⟩shame! Cursed be the day that I was first united to so lewd a body: O that I had but so much favour as that I might never see thee more: Our parting is bitter and doleful: but our meeting again, to receive at that dreadful day, the fullness of our deserved vengeance, will be far more terrible and intolerable. But what mean I thus (by too late lamentation) to seek to prolong time? My lost hour is come: I hear the heart strings break: this filthy house of clay falls on my head: here is neither hope, help, nor place of any longer abiding. And must I needs be gone? Then filthy carcass: Oh filthy carcass with farewell, farewell, I leave