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

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, Jam. 5. 1, 2, 3. Rom. 2. 5. You contemptuously cast that bread to dogs, which he giveth you to supply your own necessities: You treacherously carry over his provision to the enemy. Consider ⟨p. 40⟩this, you that say you hope to be saved, because God is merciful: You have found indeed that God is merciful, by large experience: But if you do not learn, and quickly learn to make a better use of his mercies, abused mercy will prove your everlasting misery: O what a reckoning will you have? What a load to press you down to Hell? Unless you would have used them better, it had been easier for you, if these temporal mercies had been denied you: Can that man look to be saved by mercy, that would not be entreated to consent that mercy should save him in the day of salvation? in the accepted time? but served the Devil with those very mercies that would have saved him? God sendeth you his mercies to kill your sins, and sanctify you, and engage you to himself; and if you will feed your sins with them, and make them your idols, and forsake God for them, and be false to him, to your Covenant, and your duty, and neglect that One thing for which he gave them to you, you do not only lose them, but turn them to a curse. And, alas, poor sinners, what will you have to fly to, to trust in, or to comfort you, when mercy abused hath not only forsaken you, but falls upon you as a mountain, and feedeth your aggravated endless misery?

Nay your sin is greater then meerly 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,