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

This is true, too true Sirs, as harsh as it seemeth to your ears; And if it displease you to hear of it, bethink your selves what it is to do it; and how God and all wise men must judge of you ⟨p. 32⟩that have no more mercy on your selves: Certainly it is much worse to do it, then to tell you what you do. God tells men of their sin, and God doth nothing but what is good; but it is themselves only that commit it: I beseech you do but understand what you are doing, as long as the One thing necessary is neglected by you.

4. Consider also, that whatsoever else you have been doing in the world, if you have not done the One thing needful, you have unmanned your selves, and lived below your Reason, and in plain English, you have lived as be sides your wits.

4. Consider also, that whatsoever else you have been doing in the world, if you have not done the One thing needful, you have unman'd your selves, and lived below your Reason, and in plain English, you have lived as be sides your wits.

I give you no harder language then God himself hath frequently given you in his Word, and then you will shortly give your selves, if you repent not; yea and sooner if you do repent. If you have (in this) the use of your Reason, you must needs know what you have your Reason for: And I beseech you tell me for what you have it, if not to serve and please your Maker, and prepare for your everlasting state? Is it only that you may know how to plough and sow, and follow your trades and pleasure in the world, and satisfy your flesh a little while, and then die as the beasts that perish? None of you, I suppose, will say so, that calls himself a Christian: If God had made you for no higher things then beasts, he would have given you no higher faculties and endowments. As they be not made to enjoy God, so they have no knowledge of him: he sendeth not his Word to them, and calleth them not to learn the knowledge of his will: But you know, or may know, that there is a God, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and are capable of Loving him, intending him, and serving him, and therefore of enjoying him: Beasts are not ruled by the hopes and fears of a life after this: For their nature and end do not require it. But men must be thus ruled, or else there can be no sufficient ruling of them, in an ordinary way: Which shows that the Nature of man is capable of the things which are the matter of their hopes and fears.