3. Employ your time as becomes Believers. Faith only can acquaint you, what an unconceivable weight doth lye upon this inch of hasty time. As you behave your selves for a few days, it must go with you in joy or misery for ever: You have your appointed time, for your appointed work. God hath turned the glass upon you; much of it is run out already. No price can call back one hour that you have lost. No power or policy can retard its course; Sic fugiunt fraeno non remorante dies. When it comes to the last sand, and time is gone, you'll know the worth of it: You'll then confess it should have seemed more precious in your eyes, than to have been cast away upon things of nought. O precious time! more worth than all the riches of the world! How highly is ⟨p. 66⟩it valued by all at last? And how basely is it esteemed new by the most? Now it is no more worth with them, than to be sold for unnecessary sports, and ease, and wasted in idleness and vain delights: But then; when it's gone, and all's too late, how loud would they cry, if cries could call back Time again! O then what a mercy would it seem, if God would try them once again! and trust them but with another life, or with Hezekiah's fifteen years! or but with fifteen days, or hours, upon such terms of grace, as they held that life which they abused! It amazeth me to observe the lamentable stupidity of the world, how hard they beg for time when they think it is near an end! and how carelessly they let it slide away, when they have strength and faculties to improve it! They are grievously afraid lest death deprive them of it; and yet they are not afraid to deprive themselves of the use and fruit of it, and to cast it away as contemptuously, as if it were an useless thing. I seldom come near a dying man, but I hear him complain of the loss of Time, and wish it were to spend again, that it might be better valued and used. And yet the living will not be warned. O value Time, as wise men, while you have it; and not as miserable fools, when it is gone! If our Lord said, I must do the work of him that sent me while it is day; for the night cometh when no man can work, Joh. 9.4. What need then have such as we to be doing, and make much of time? O let not company, mirth or business, make you forget the work of Time! Can you play, or loiter away your hours, with Eternity in your eye?
3. Imploy your time as becomes Believers. Faith only can acquaint you, what an unconceivable weight doth lye upon this inch of hasty time. As you behave your selves for a few daies, it must go with you in joy or misery for ever: You have your appointed time, for your appointed work. God hath turned the glass upon you; much of it is run out already. No price can call back one hour that you have lost. No power or policy can retard its course; Sic fugiunt fraeno non remorante dies. When it comes to the last sand, and time is gone, you'l know the worth of it: You'l then confess it should have seemed more precious in your eyes, than to have been cast away upon things of nought. O precious time! more worth than all the riches of the world! How highly is ⟨p. 66⟩it valued by all at last? And how basely is it esteemed new by the most? Now it is no more worth with them, than to be sold for unnecessary sports, and ease, and wasted in idleness and vain delights: But then; when it's gone, and all's too late, how loud would they cry, if cryes could call back Time again! O then what a mercy would it seem, if God would try them once again! and trust them but with another life, or with Hezekiah's fifteen years! or but with fifteen daies, or hours, upon such terms of grace, as they held that life which they abused! It amazeth me to observe the lamentable stupidity of the world, how hard they beg for time when they think it is near an end! and how carelesly they let it slide away, when they have strength and faculties to improve it! They are grievously afraid lest death deprive them of it; and yet they are not afraid to deprive themselves of the use and fruit of it, and to cast it away as contemptuously, as if it were an useless thing. I seldom come near a dying man, but I hear him complain of the loss of Time, and wish it were to spend again, that it might be better valued and used. And yet the living will not be warned. O value Time, as wise men, while you have it; and not as miserable fools, when it is gone! If our Lord said, I must do the work of him that sent me while it is day; for the night cometh when no man can work, Joh. 9.4. What need then have such as we to be doing, and make much of time? O let not company, mirth or business, make you forget the work of Time! Can you play, or loiter away your hours, with Eternity in your eye?
