A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

¹3. What will you do with those worldly riches you are so eager to obtain? or what can they do for you? Will you take them with you to your Graves? or carry them with you to another world? You know you cannot: Job. 1. latter end. Eccl. 5.15. No not so much as to fill your hand. It was a ridiculous action of a rich man, that Mr. Rogers in his Treatise of Love speaks of, that being very sick to death called for his Gold, and being brought to him took a twenty shillings piece and put it in his mouth, saying, Some are wiser than some; this I will take with me however: If some were not wiser than he, they would all be fools; for he and his gold might perish together: though it may be likely that when he was dead, his gold was taken from him, and so in his own sense he was not wiser than others. But will gold go in Heaven or in Hell? There it is nothing worth. When you have got much by your trading, which keeps you from praying, will it not make you loth to dye, having laid up no better treasure elsewhere? and vex you to the heart, that for this you have lost God and Christ and Heaven and your souls, and your riches too at last? As Mr. Latimer, in a Sermon before King Edward ⟨p. 357⟩the Sixth, relates of a rich man that was sick, and one coming to him and seeing how he was, told him, he thought he could not recover, but was a dead man; who presently flew into a rage, saying, Must I die? Send for the Physician, wounds! sides! heart! Must I die? must I die? wounds! sides! heart! Must I die, and leave all my riches? and so continued crying out in this language, till he dyed: and are these the things you are so earnest for, that you can find no time to pray for better? A like passage Mr. Jeremy Burroughs on Psal. 17.14. relates of one that once lived near to him, that being sick called for his bags of silver, and hugging them in his arms said, Must I leave you? must I leave you? Pray for an interest in God and Christ, and when you die, being his and he yours, you shall not leave him, but be taken into fuller enjoyment of him. Consider again, as you cannot take them with you when you die, so these things cannot comfort you in your Sickness. As the same Author mentions another, that on his sick bed called for his bags of gold, which being brought he laid to his breast as near his heart as he could, but after a while said, Here, take them again, take them again;