Directions and persuasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…Directions and perswasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…

6. Have you any Thing that better deserves your Consideration, then God, and your Salvation? Certainly God hath more right to your Thoughts then any thing else that you can place them on. Your flesh, your Friends, your worldly business are neither so honourable, 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, then barren Heath; or by digging in a Mine of Gold, then in a Clay-pit. So is there more pleasure and profit to be gotten, in one hours serious Thoughts of your Salvation, then in thinking all your life time of the world.

6. Have you any Thing that better deserves your Consideration, then God, and your Salvation? Certainly God hath more right to your Thoughts then any thing else that you can place them on. Your flesh, your Friends, your worldly business are neither so honourable, so necessarie, or so profitable Subjects, as God, and Heaven are. As there is more profit to be got by the tillage of fruitful Land, then barren Heath; or by digging in a Mine of Gold, then in a Clay-pit. So is there more pleasure and profit to be gotten, in one hours serious Thoughts of your Salvation, then in thinking all your life time of the world.

7. At least methinks you should Consider, how disproportionably and unequally ⟨p. 95⟩you lay out your Thoughts. Cannot you spare God the Tenths; no nor the hundred-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's far the greatest number, that never spent one hour since they were born, in withdrawing themselves purposely from all other business, 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? What? did thy Land, and Livings, worldly matters deserve all