Now or never the holy, serious, diligent believer justified, encouraged, excited and directed, and…

1. For the first: That you have lost your Time, must be the matter of your Humiliation: But that all is not lost, before you see your sin and duty; but yet the patience and mercy of the Lord are attending you, and continuing your hope; this is the matter of your comfort and encouragement. Repent therefore that you came no sooner home: But rejoice that you are come home at last: and now be more diligent in redeeming your time, in remembrance of the time already lost; And though it must be your grief, that your Master hath been deprived of so much as his service, and others of so much good which you should have done them, and that time is lost that cannot be recalled; yet it is your comfort, that your own Reward may be equal with them that have born the burden and heat of the day: For many that are last (in the ⟨p. 144⟩time of their coming in) shall be first (in receiving their reward.) This is the meaning of that Parable in Mat. 20. which was spoken to encourage them that had stood out too long, and to rebuke the envy, and high expectations of them that came in sooner: and it is no whit contradictory to those passages in Matth. 25. which intimate a different degree of glory to be given to them that have different degrees of Grace upon their industrious improvement. The one Parable Matth. 20. shows that men shall not be rewarded differently for their longer or shorter continuance in the work, but that those that came in late, and yet are found with equal holiness, shall be rewarded equally with the first: And more, if their holiness be more, which the second Parable expresseth, declaring Gods purpose to give them the greatest Glory, ⟨p. 145⟩that have improved their Holiness to the greatest Measure. O therefore that the sense of your former unkindness might provoke you the more resolvedly to give up your selves in fervent love, and full obedience! and then you will find that your Time is Redeemed, though it cannot be recalled; and that Mercy hath secured your full reward. O what an unspeakable▪ Mercy is this! that if yet you will devote your selves entirely to Christ, and serve him with your might, the little time that yet remains, he will take it as if you had come in at the first hour of the day!