The trades-man's calling being a discourse concerning the nature, necessity, choice, &c. of a…

2. It is your Interest to make Restitution. For what you have got by Wrong, will never do you good. The Gain of Deceit lasts but a while; or if it do, it stays with you in Wrath. If it abide with you till you die, yet the Curse of God stays with it; and lies, if not visibly upon your Estate, Body, or Children, yet really on your poor Souls, which is worst of all. It adheres to all you have, as the Plague to a rich Suit of Clothes; they are gay and rich, but Death is in them: and who, that's wise, would wear the richest Suit with the Plague in it? course Sack-cloth were much better. So it were better for you a thousand times to live poor and just, and die blessed, than to live and die with a Curse. Now is it not Wisdom to part with that which will do you no good but harm? What, run a hazard of losing all your honest Gain, by keeping some little which is dishonest? What, and venture Hell-fire, rather than part with some of your Estate; when as (if God say the Word tonight) you must part with it all before Morning? Is it not better to bring it back and be saved, than to have it fetched, and you be lost? I tell you, if ever your Eyes be savingly opened, you will make as much haste to restore what you have wrongfully gotten, as ever you did to get it; and shake it out of your Skirt, as you would brush a Spark of Fire off your Clothes. Think not hereby to lay up Estates for your Children, alas! this is not the way; for if you could rise out of your Graves but one fifty Years after your Death, you would see that the Canker of your Deceits and Injuries had consumed it all; and that those Riches which ruined your poor ⟨p. 131⟩Souls in the getting of them, had ruined the Souls of your Posterity in the consuming of them. The Father damned by injurious Getting an Estate, and the Son, or Grand-child at furthest, damned by the ungodly Wasting of it. How many Houses have you seen ruined, where an Oppressor, where a Knave hath dwelt? in a few Generations their Names are blotted out; and they who preferred Earth to Heaven, have neither Earth nor Heaven at last: and can you go by their Houses, and not receive Instruction? will you see and know this, and yet follow them? Resolve then from this Day to restore what you cannot honestly or safely keep. Make your selves Friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness.

2. It is your Interest to make Restitution. For what you have got by Wrong, will never do you good. The Gain of Deceit lasts but a while; or if it do, it stays with you in Wrath. If it abide with you till you dy, yet the Curse of God stays with it; and lies, if not visibly upon your Estate, Body, or Children, yet really on your poor Souls, which is worst of all. It adheres to all you have, as the Plague to a rich Suit of Cloaths; they are gay and rich, but Death is in them: and who, that's wise, would wear the richest Suit with the Plague in it? course Sack-cloth were much better. So it were better for you a thousand times to live poor and just, and dy blessed, than to live and dy with a Curse. Now is it not Wisdom to part with that which will do you no good but harm? What, run a hazard of losing all your honest Gain, by keeping some little which is dishonest? What, and venture Hell-fire, rather than part with some of your Estate; when as (if God say the Word tonight) you must part with it all before Morning? Is it not better to bring it back and be saved, than to have it fetcht, and you be lost? I tell you, if ever your Eyes be savingly open'd, you will make as much haste to restore what you have wrongfully gotten, as ever you did to get it; and shake it out of your Skirt, as you would brush a Spark of Fire off your Cloaths. Think not hereby to lay up Estates for your Children, alas! this is not the way; for if you could rise out of your Graves but one fifty Years after your Death, you would see that the Canker of your Deceits and Injuries had consum'd it all; and that those Riches which ruin'd your poor