The redemption of time, or, A sermon containing very good remedies for them that…

Now comes to be handled the fifth and worst of all the five consumers of time; which is so much the more dangerous, because it is in some honest reckoning among most men; and is esteemed as the right Lord and true owner of that time, which for the most part it holds by usurpation and injury. This is the immoderate care of the world, and of things of this life, though in themselves honest and lawful, when a man doth wind himself into such a labyrinth and maze of affairs, as he cannot get out at fit times to spiritual and religious duties, at least not to those which are private: when the heart is so surcharged with bargains and purchases, and buying and ⟨p. 48⟩selling, and building, and such like; that God and goodness, Christ and salvation, Heaven and Hell, come not into a mans mind once in a day, scarce once in a week; or at least, […] they come, they be quickly shut o•t, and have no long nor quiet entertainment there: when the Soul is overwhelmed with caring, thinking, devising, and striving how to grow great h•re, and is so tossed in the gulf of earthly matters, that it cannot come to land (as it were) to settle it self in any proportion, to think how it may grow great in Heaven, and how it may get possession of •he true treasure. This is a wondrous consumer of good hours, digging them all into the dunghill of this World. Christ finds fault with this in the Parable; the men bidden to the Feast, had Farms, and Oxen, and Wives, and such matters in hand, (business forsooth of more importance than so) and therefore ⟨p. 49⟩could not come, Matth. 22. And the thorny ground had so much carking and caring how to live, that it doth even choke the Word, the good seed could not grow thereby, Matth. 13. And the Lord complains of them of the captivity of Judah, Hag. 1.13. that they could find time to build their own houses, yea and to ceil them too; but they sa•d, it was no time to build the house of God: so this sin doth engross all the time to it self, and will not give elbow-room to any good exercise, especially to any private exercises, without which the public are but as meat without digestion; and yet it comes like an honest and approvable thing, painted wih the name of thriftiness and pains in ones lawful calling.