The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

One time or other Conscience will speak, and have a hearing: the sooner the better: Put it not off to a time so unseasonable as Death; I say not unseasonable for Conscience to speak in; but unseasonable for it to begin to speak in; and unseasonable for those terrible words that need a calmer time for answer; and unseasonable for so many things and so great, as self-betrayers use to put off until then, which need a longer time for due consideration and dispatch.

One time or other Conscience will speak, and have a hearing: the sooner the better: Put it not off to a time so unseasonable as Death; I say not unseasonable for Conscience to speak in; but unseasonable for it to begin to speak in; and unseasonable for those terrible words that need a calmer time for answer; and unseasonable for so many things and so great, as self-betrayers use to put off untill then, which need a longer time for due consideration and dispatch.

3. And I beseech you consider, with what amazing horror it must needs surprise you, to find ox a sudden and unexpectedly ⟨p. 201⟩when you die, that all is worse with •ou then you imagined or would believe? After a whole life of confident presumption, to be suddenly convinced by so dreadful an experience, of your so long and wilful a mistake! To find in a moment, that you have flattered your souls, into so desperate a state of woe! To see and feel all the selfish cavils and reasonings confuted, in one hour, which the wisest and holiest men on earth, could never beat you from before! O Sirs, you know not now, what a day, what a conviction, that will be! You know not what it is for a guilty soul to to pass out of the Body, and find it self in the plague of an unsanctified state, and hated of the Holy God, that never would know it till it was too late. You know not what it is to be turned by Death into that world of spirits, where all self-deceit is detected by experience: and all must undergo a righteous judgement; where blindness and self-love can no more persuade the miserable that they are happy; the unholy that they are sanctified; the fleshly minded men that they are spiritual; the lovers of the world, that they are the Lovers of God: Men cannot there believe what they list: nor take that for a truth which makes