A Christian Directory

we shall have this servant to talk to, and the other to hear, and our Relations to respect, and abundance of little things to mind, so little as not to be named by themselves, about meat and drink, and clothes and dressing, and house, and goods, and servants, and work, and tradesmen and messengers, and marketing, and payments, and cattle, and a hundred things not to be reckoned up, that will every one take up a little of your Time, and those littles set together will be all. As the covetous usurer that to purchase a place of Honour, agreed for a month, to give a penny to every one that asked him: which being quickly noised abroad in the City, there came so many for their pence, as took all that he had, and made▪ him quit his place of Honour, because he had nothing left to maintain it. So perhaps you are an eminent much valued Minister; and this draweth upon you such a multitude of acquaintance, every one expecting a little of your Time, that among them all, they leave you almost none for your studies, whereby not only your Conscience is wounded, but your parts are quenched, and your work is starved and poorly done, ⟨p. 287⟩and so your admirers themselves begin to set as light by you as by others, for that which is the effect of their own importunity. And as in our yearly expenses of our money, there goeth near as much in little matters, not to be named by themselves, and incidental unexpected charges, of which no account can be given beforehand, as doth in food and raiment and the ordinary charges which we foreknow, and reckon upon; just so it will be with your precious Time, if you be not very thrifty and resolute, and look not well to it: you will have such abundance of little matters, scarce fit to be named which will every one require a little, and one begin where the other endeth, that you will find in the review, when Time is gone, that Satan was too cunning for you, and cheated you by drawing you into seeming necessities. This is the grand Reason why Marriage and House-keeping are so greatly inconvenient to a Pastor of the Church, that can avoid them, because they bring upon him such abundance of these little diversions which cannot be foreseen. In this case a conscionable man (in what calling soever) must be Resolute:

we shall have this servant to talk to, and the other to hear, and our Relations to respect, and abundance of little things to mind, so little as not to be named by themselves, about meat and drink, and cloaths and dressing, and house, and goods, and servants, and work, and tradesmen and messengers, and marketting, and payments, and cattle, and a hundred things not to be reckoned up, that will every one take up a little of your Time, and those littles set together will be all. As the covetous usurer that to purchase a place of Honour, agreed for a month, to give a penny to every one that asked him: which being quickly noised abroad in the City, there came so many for their pence, as took all that he had, and made him quit his place of Honour, because he had nothing left to maintain it. So perhaps you are an eminent much valued Minister; and this draweth upon you such a multitude of acquaintance, every one expecting a little of your Time, that among them all, they leave you allmost none for your studies, whereby not only your Conscience is wounded, but your parts are quenched, and your work is starved and poorly done,