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

How short is the pleasure, and how long is the pain! How short is the honour, and how long is the shame! What is it under the Sun that is everlasting? You have friends, but will they dwell with you here for ever? You have houses, but how long will you stay in them? It is but as yesterday since your houses had other Inhabitants, and your Towns and Countries other Inhabitants, and where are they all now? You have health, but how soon will you consume in sickness? You have life, but how soon will it end in death? You have the pleasure of sin; you say unto your selves Eat, drink and be merry, but how soon will all the mirth be marred, and turned into sadness, everlasting sadness! When you hear, Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul, and then whose shall these things be? Luke 12. 20.

How short is the pleasure, and how long is the pain! How short is the honour, and how long is the shame! What is it under the Sun that is everlasting? You have friends, but will they dwell with you here for ever? You have houses, but how long will you stay in them? It is but as yesterday since your houses had other Inhabitants, and your Towns and Countries other Inhabitants, and where are they all now? You have health, but how soon will you consume in sickness? You have life, but how soon will it end in death? You have the pleasure of sin; you say unto your selves Eat, drink and be merry, but how soon will all the mirth be mar'd, and turned into sadness, everlasting sadness! When you hear, Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul, and then whose shall these things be? Luke 12. 20.

Oh miserable wretch! If thou hadst chosen God instead of thy sin, and the everlasting Kingdom instead of this world, thou wouldst not have been thus cast off in thy extremity: God would have stuck better to thee: Heaven would have proved a more durable Inheritance: For it is a Kingdom that cannot be moved, Heb. 12. 28. The day is near when thy despairing soul must take up this lamentation, [My dearest friends are now forsaking me, I must part with all that I laboured for, and delighted in. I have drunk up all my part of pleasure, and there is no more left. My merry company, and honours, and recreations are past and gone; I shall eat, and drink, and sport no more: but God would not have used me thus, if I had set my heart upon him and his Kingdom. Oh that I had chosen him, and made him my portion, and spent these thoughts, and cares, and labours, for the obtaining of his love, and promised Glory, which I spent for the pleasing and providing for my flesh. Then I should have had a happiness that death could not deprive