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

Yet there are other faults, of which Christians are to be warned: as to begin with the last first. How many be there that are so stuffed with worldly businesses, and yet are greedy of more, as that they cannot find leisure one hour in a day, nay, scarce in a week, to bestow upon rea•ing, praying, meditating or conferring? Yea, as though time were made for nothing but to seek wealth and transitory things, so it is the chiefest of their care. It appears that such labour not for conscience, but for gain, because they cannot break off ordinary labours so long, as well to perform ordinary duties of Religion. Many may say (with grief enough if ⟨p. 81⟩they did well) that their hands are so full of the world, as that they can scarce through the week, take the Bible into their hands to read any thing therein, unless perhaps it be in the Church at some public meeting. Thus, men which are born to a better inheritance, are content to w•ar out themselves in the earth, as if they were to perish in the earth with other baser creatures. Here is one fault to be amended then: let no Christian bestow so much time in the world, as that he cannot find sufficient to seek Heaven and the things thereof. Then for the matter of sports, methinks some Christians should even shrink, before the word of reproof comes to them, when they may think of so many hours spent such a day at bowls; so many (it may be) the next day in shooting; so many the third day in shovel-board, or the like exercises: haply in themselves ⟨p. 82⟩not unlawful, and when they come to reckoning for religious exercises, the count comes in very slowly, but the minutes or quarte•s, some half quarter of an hour, or thereabouts bestowed such a day in praying alone, and some three or four days after, about a quarter of an hour in reading; and (it may be) the next week, some half quarter more in meditation: and thus if the expenses of time were written in our debt-books, as they be in Gods; we might even blush to read so many Items for pleasure and sport, and scarce one or two in a side for private religious exercises. Then for our words: may we not hang down our heads with shame, to think that God made our tongues, and we speak scarce one word in an hundred to his glory? Idle words, even many of those whom we are to regard as Christians, count them no faults, neither