The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

4. You do as it were pray for death, or provoke God to take away your lives. For if they be good for nothing else but idleness, and beastly pleasures, why should you expect to have them continued? or at least, why should he not use you as Nebuchadnezzar, and take away your reason, and turn you into beasts, if the life and pleasure of a beast be all that you desire? Could not you eat, and drink, and sleep, and play, without an intellectual soul? Cannot the birds make their nests, and breed, and feed their young, and sit and sing, without an intellectual nature? Cannot a swine have his ease, and meat, and lust, without reason? what should you do with reason for such uses?

5. You show a stupid senseless heart, that can live idly, and have so much to do; and have so many spurs to rouse you up: To live continually in the sight of God, to have a soul so ignorant, so unbelieving, so unholy, so unfurnished of faith and love, so unready for death, so uncertain of salvation; nay in such apparent danger of damnation, and to be still uncertain of living one day or hour longer; and yet to live idly in such a case, as if all were well, and your work were done, and you had no more to fear or care for: O what a mad, what a dead, what a sottish kind of soul is this! to see the graves before your eyes; to see your neighbours carried thither; to feel the tokens of mortality daily in your selves; to be called on and warned to prepare, and yet under this to live as if you had nothing to do, but to show your selves in the neatest dress, and as a Peacock, to spread your plumes for your selves and others to look upon, or ⟨p. 485⟩to pamper a carcass for worms and rottenness! O what a deplorable case is this! The Lord pity you, and awaken your understandings, and bring you to your wits, and you will then wonder at your own stupidity.

5. You shew a stupid sensless heart, that can live idly, and have so much to do; and have so many spurrs to rouse you up: To live continually in the sight of God, to have a soul so ignorant, so unbelieving, so unholy, so unfurnished of faith and love, so unready for death, so uncertain of salvation; nay in such apparent danger of damnation, and to be still uncertain of living one day or hour longer; and yet to live idly in such a case, as if all were well, and your work were done, and you had no more to fear or care for: O what a mad, what a dead, what a sottish kind of soul is this! to see the graves before your eyes; to see your neighbours carryed thither; to feel the tokens of mortality daily in your selves; to be called on and warned to prepare, and yet under this to live as if you had nothing to do, but to shew your selves in the neatest dress, and as a Peacock, to spread your plumes for your selves and others to look upon, or