Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace…

For there is no one perisheth, but for loving some Creature more than God: And complacency is the formal act of Love. Love not the World, nor the things that are in the World, for if any man love the World, the love of the Father is not in him, 1 John 2.15. Value all earthly things as they conduce to your Masters Service, or to your Salvation; and not as they tend to the pleasing of your Flesh: It is the commonest and most dangerous folly in the World, to be eager to have our houses and lands and provisions and every thing about us in the most pleasing and amiable state: when as this is the acknowledged way to Hell, and the only poison of the Soul. Are you not in more danger of overloving a pleasing and prosperous condition, than a bitter and vexatious state? and of overloving Riches, honour, and sensual fullness and delights, rather than Poverty, reproach, and mortification? And do you not know that if ever you be damned, it ⟨p. 125⟩will be for loving the World too much, and God too little? Is it for nothing that Christ describeth a Saint to you as a Lazarus in poverty and sores, and a damned wretch as one that was clothed in Purple and Silk, and fared sumptuously every day, Luke 16. Did not Christ know what he did when he put the rich man upon this trial, to part with all his worldly riches, and follow Christ for a treasure in heaven?