Compassionate counsel to all young men especially I. London apprentices, II. students of divinity,…

§ 4. And how doleful a case is it, that all the Care, and Love, and Labour of your ⟨p. 39⟩Parents, Masters, and Teachers should be lost upon you? God hath made all this their great Duty for your good; and will you despise God and them, and wilfully for nothing reject it all? Shall all the pain of a Child-bearing Mother, and all her trouble and labour to breed you up, and all your Parents care to provide for you, be but to breed up a slave for the Flesh, the World, and the Devil, and a firebrand for Hell? Shall godly Parents Prayers for you, and Teaching, and Counsel of you, and all their desire and care for your Salvation, be despised by you, and all forgotten and cast away for a swinish Lust?

§ 5. And how doleful a case is it, that so much of so short a Life should be lost, and a thousand times worse than lost; even turned into sin, to prepare for misery, when alas the longest Life is little enough for our important work, and quickly gone, and the Reckoning and Judge are hard at hand? All the Wealth, Wit or Power in the World, cannot bring or buy you back one hour▪ of all that precious time, which you now so basely cast away. O how glad would you be of a little of it ere long, on the terms that now you have it, when you lie dying, and perceive that your souls are unready to appear before a righteous ⟨p. 40⟩God! Then O for one year more of precious time! O that you knew how to call again the time which you cast away on sin! You will then perceive with a terrified Conscience, that time was not so little worth as you once thought it, nor given you for so base a work; yea, if God in mercy bring you hereafter to true Conversion, O how it will wound your hearts, to think how much of your Youth was so madly cast away, while your God, your Souls, and everlasting hopes, were all neglected and despised!

§ 5. And how doleful a case is it, that so much of so short a Life should be lost, and a thousand times worse than lost; even turned into sin, to prepare for misery, when alas the longest Life is little enough for our important work, and quickly gone, and the Reckoning and Judge are hard at hand? All the Wealth, Wit or Power in the World, cannot bring or buy you back one hour of all that precious time, which you now so basely cast away. O how glad would you be of a little of it ere long, on the tearms that now you have it, when you lie dying, and perceive that your souls are unready to appear before a righteous