A second volume of sermons preached by the late reverend and learned Thomas Manton…

(2.) This Watching consisteth in Preparation. If we expect a thing to come, and do not prepare accordingly, we do not watch for it, but neglect it. Now this Preparation must be speedy, thorough, and constant.

1. Watching implieth a speedy Preparation. That we may be in a fit capacity to receive Christ at his Coming, we must take the next advantage, lest we be surprised and called home before we are ready. This is not a work to be put off to Age or Sickness: Why should we provide a burden for that time when we are weakest, and least able to bear it? And therefore now we should begin it. Every day brings burden enough for it self. He is an unthrifty Tenant that suffers the Rent of one year to run into another: How shall that Crop discharge two years Rent, that cannot pay one? If it be tedious now to turn to God, it will be more tedious when thou art hardened in sin; and thy neglects of God and Christ will provoke him to deny his Grace: And what assurance have we of another year? we have this by the favour of Providence. Our life was forfeited and lost in Law the first moment; and therefore we have but a Reprieve during pleasure. What warrant have I to expect another day, but my own hope and fancy? He that is Security for himself to himself, is no whit the better secured; he doth but take the word of a Spend-thrift. If we had a Lease of our Lives, yet what hope of Grace? when we have resisted the Spirit of God all our lives, what hope that he should assist us at death? we do but provide matter of Despair to our selves: Every day will prove worse and worse. A Traveller may easily pass over the Head of a Brook, but when he goeth down, thinking to find it narrower, 'tis so broad that he cannot pass at all. Every delay brings on a new degree of hardness of Heart on our part, and a new desertion on Gods part: Now how wilt thou untwist the former Web which thou hast been so long a weaving? That Soul must needs be in perplexity at the hour of Death, that seeth the day spent, and the business appointed to him not yet begun, and a Disease disabling him for any serious reflections. As if a Traveller seeth the Sun setting when he is entering upon his Journey, the Evening of the day, and the Morning of the task do not well agree together. All the time that remaineth is too short to lament the lost time already past: Therefore if Watching inferreth Preparation, it inferreth speedy Preparation; and a man is not in a good condition to live, that is not fit to die.