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

If your own children should ask you for meat or drink, and when they have it should throw it to the ⟨p. 39⟩dogs; or ask you for money, and cast it into the dirt, and do thus an hundred and an hundred times over, would you go on to give it them because they cry for it?

O Sirs, that you could but use your Reason in the matters for which it was given you by your Maker! Either time and mercy is worth something, or nothing: If it be worth nothing, never beg for it, and never be sad when it is taken from you. Why make you such a stir for that which is nothing worth? (I mean your corporal mercies, for spiritual mercies you can be too well content to be without) But if they be worth any thing, why do you cast them away, and make no better use of them? What good do you with them? or what good do they do you? Believe it, sinners, God doth not despise his mercies as you do. He will not alway give you meat, and drink, and health, and strength, and life, to play with, and do nothing with. He will teach you better to value them before he hath done with you. Not that he thinks them too good for you; but he would have them be better to you then you will let them be. He would have every bit you eat, to be used to strengthen you in your walk to heaven, and every hour of your time to help you towards eternal happiness, and every present mercy to further your everlasting mercy; that so by the improvement, their value may be advanced, and they may be mercies indeed to you. Be ruled by God, and you shall receive more in one mercy, then you do now in a thousand. But if you will do nothing with them, blame him not if he take them from you, and leave you destitute of what you knew not how to use.

Nay your sin is greater then merely to cast away your mercies: You do not only lose them, but turn them all into a curse, and undo your souls with that which is given for the sustentation of your bodies: While you know no better use of mercies, then to please your senses, and accommodate the flesh, and forget the One thing needful, which is the End of all, you turn them all into sin, and fight against God by them, and strengthen his enemy and your own, and block up your way to Heaven by them, and treasure up wrath for the dreadful day, when your wealth shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire,