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…

Sit down, and count what it must cost you, if you will be saved; and on what rates it is, that you must follow Christ. Can you voluntarily, for the love of him, and the hope of Glory, take up your Cross, and follow him in poverty, in losses, in reproaches; though scorns, and scourgings, and prisons and death? Do you value his loving kindness better then life, Psal. 63. 3? Can you deny your eyes, and your appetites their desires? Can you consent to be vile in the eyes of men, and to tame your own flesh, and keep it in subjection, and live a flesh-displeasing life, that h•ving suffered ⟨p. 303⟩with Christ, you may also be glorified with him, Rom. 8. 17. If you cannot consent to these terms, you cannot be Christians, nor you cannot be Saved. If you must needs be rich, or must be honourable, yea, if you must needs save your estates, or liberties, or lives, it's past all question, you must needs let go Christ, and Glory: If you must needs have the world, you must needs lose your Souls. If you must have your good things here, you must not have them hereafter too, but be tormented, when Christ's sufferers are comforted, Luke 16. 25. These hopes of purveying for the flesh, as long as they can; and then of being saved, when they can stay here no longer, is it that hath deceived many a thousand, to their undoing. It's a strange thing to see how the world doth blind very knowing men, and how unacquainted these Hypocrites are with their own hearts. What a confident profession of down-right godliness many of them will make, yea of some extraordinary height in Religion, when nothing is so dear to to them, as their present prosperity, and God hath not near so much interest in them as the flesh? What contrivances ⟨p. 304⟩some of them make for riches, or rising in the world? And how tender others are of their honour with men; and how tenacious they are of their Mammon of unrighteousness; and how much money, and great men can do with them: And most of them pamper their flesh, and serve it in a cleanlier way of Religiousness, even as much, though not so disgracefully, and grossly, as drunkards, and whoremongers do, in a more discernible sensuality. If the times do but change, and countenance any error, how small an Argument will make their judgments bend with the times: If truth or duty must cost them deer: