A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

Sirs, as lightly as you hear this question now, you will One day find that your lives, yea your salvation lieth upon your answer to it. Can you say truly, as before the searcher of hearts, that it is he that hath had your hearts? That this One thing hath been more esteemed by you, than all the world besides? That other things have all stooped unto this One, and served under it? And that this hath had the stream of your heartiest affections, ⟨p. 22⟩and the drift of your endeavours, and hath been the matter that you have had first to do, and the thing for which you have lived in the world?

Sirs, as lightly as you hear this question now, you will One day find that your lives, yea your salvation lyeth upon your answer to it. Can you say truly, as before the searcher of hearts, that it is he that hath had your hearts? That this One thing hath been more esteemed by you, than all the world besides? That other things have all stooped unto this One, and served under it? And that this hath had the stream of your heartiest affections, ⟨p. 22⟩and the drift of your endeavours, and hath been the matter that you have had first to do, and the thing for which you have lived in the world?

If this be not so, never talk of your Christianity for shame: Your Religion is vain, if this be not your Religion. Alas I know that we have all of us yet too much of the flesh, and are too cold in our affections, and too slow and uneven in our endeavours for our end: But yet for all that I must still tell you, (as I have often done because it is necessary) that here lieth the difference between the truly sanctified soul, and all the hypocrites and half-Christians in the world: [Every true Christian is devoted unto God, and hath made an hearty and absolute resignation of himself and all that he hath unto him; and therefore loveth him with his superlative, most appreciative love, and serveth him with the best he hath, and thinks nothing too good or too dear for God, and for the attainment of his everlasting Rest: Christ hath the chiefest room in his heart, and the bent and drift of his life is for him: He studieth how he may best serve and please him with his time, his interest, and all that he hath: and if he fall, as it is contrary to the habitual resolution of his soul, and contrary to the scope and current of his heart and life, so he riseth again by repentance with sorrow for his sin, and loathing of himself, and sincerely endeavours to amend, and goeth on resolvedly in his holy course.] This is the state of every one that is in a state of life.