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

1. Whatever you have been doing in the world, you have lost your Time, if you have not been seeking the One thing necessary. If you have been gathering riches, or growing up in honour as the rush groweth in the mire, (Job 8. 11.) or filling your purses or your barns, or pleasing your fantasies and flesh; you have but fooled away your time, and done just nothing, and much worse: Nothing is done, if the One thing Necessary be undone Believe it, Time is a precious thing, and ought not to have been thus cast away. When you come to the end of it, the worst and proudest of you shall confess it is precious. Then O for one year more! O for a few days or hours more, to make sure of this One thing, which you should have spent your lives in making sure of. Will you then think thus, and yet can you now afford to cast away twenty or thirty years upon Nothing? If Time be worth Nothing, your Lives are worth Nothing: And why should a man desire to Live for Nothing? You Love your lives too much, and yet will you so contemptuously cast them away? He hath lost his life, who hath lost the End of his life. The loss of an hundred pound in money is not (to your selves) so great a loss, as the loss of a days or hours time. What then is the loss of so many years? Did you ever well consider of this? If you live a thousand years, it is all lost, if you have not spent it in making sure of the One thing Necessary. For is not that lost, and worse a thousand times then lost; that is spent in crossing the End that it is given for? and which is no comfort, but terror in the review, and which leaveth no fruit, but grief and disappointment? Let me tell you, if you hold on thus unto the end, you will wish and wish a thousand times, either that you had never had an hours time, or else that you had had hearts, to have better perceived the worth and use of it, then to cast it away as you have done upon nothing. It is but One thing that is worth your Time and Lives.

1. Whatever you have been doing in the world, you have lost your Time, if you have not been seeking the One thing necessary. If you have been gathering riches, or growing up in honour as the rush groweth in the mire, (Job 8. 11.) or filling your purses or your barnes, or pleasing your fantasies and flesh; you have but fooled away your time, and done just nothing, and much worse: Nothing is done, if the One thing Necessary be undone Believe it, Time is a precious thing, and ought not to have been thus cast away. When you come to the end of it, the worst and proudest of you shall confess it is precious. Then O for one year more! O for a few daies or hours more, to make sure of this One thing, which you should have spent your lives in making sure of. Will you then think thus, and yet can you now afford to cast away twenty or thirty years upon Nothing? If Time be worth Nothing, your Lives are worth Nothing: And why should a man desire to Live for Nothing? You Love your lives too much, and yet will you so contemptuously cast them away? He hath lost his life, who hath lost the End of his life. The loss of an hundred pound in money is not (to your selves) so great a loss, as the loss of a dayes or hours time. What then is the loss of so many years? Did you ever well consider of this? If you live a thousand years, it is all lost, if you have not spent it in making sure of the One thing Necessary. For is not that lost, and worse a thousand times then lost; that is spent in crossing the End that it is given for? and which is no comfort, but terrour in the review, and which leaveth no fruit, but grief and disappointment? Let me tell you, if you hold on thus unto the end, you will wish and wish a thousand times, either that you had never had an hours time, or else that you had had hearts, to have better perceived the worth and use of it, then to cast it away as you have done upon nothing. It is but One thing that is worth your Time and Lives.