Agreeable admonitions for old & young. Or, Aged piety honoured, and early piety quickened.…

APPLICATION.

I. May Aged Christians Challenge a special Honour from other Christians? Let all Aged Christians be careful to deserve the Honour that they Challenge. May you that are the First Christian be First-rate Christians. Fathers, You must go before Others in Exemplary Christianity, if you would be set Above other Christians. An Old Christian is a very Venerable Thing. The Heraldry of Christianity, would look upon that, as a special mark of Honour in a Scutcheon; Act. 21. 16. An Old Disciple. But by gross failings, he may too much make himself a Contemptible Thing. You that have been longer in the school of the Lord JESUS CHRIST than others have been, Oh! YOU should be more Holy, more Devout, more Watchful, more Fruitful, and more Heavenly, than others are. 'Twill be your Disgrace, and what can be said for your Excuse? If you that came the First into the School of Christianity, should yet continue in the Lowest Form of the School. A Vain a Trifling, a Foolish Carriage in an Old Christian, tis, How ⟨p. 22⟩disagreeable? Even when you come to be Twice Children as we say, yet it is pity that you should be of a Childish Behaviour.

I am to Entreat Old Men at Fathers. Wherefore, My Fathers, and all you that were in the Lord Jesus Christ before me; I Entreat you, To Examine your selves, what Progress you have made in Christianity: Examine, whether you have now any more clear Knowledge of Him that is from the Beginning, than you had at the Beginning: Examine, whether you are any Readier for Death, than you were when your Death was further off? I Entreat you, to procure unto your selves; that Praise, Thy Last works are more than the First; and grow more full of Christ, and Heaven, than you were at the First. You have one Foot in the Grave,: I beseech you, Sirs, where should the other be? And I Entreat you, to take the Apostolical Admonition,