Some important truths about conversion, delivered in sundry sermons, / by Increase Mather, D.D.…

Consider 4 That you have lost much precious time already; and therefore it is high ⟨p. 172⟩time to look about you, and to consider well how you may improve the present season, 1 Pet. 4.3. The time past of our life may suffice us, to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. So the time past which hath been misspent is enough and too much to be lost. Alas, men spend the greatest part of their time either in doing nothing, or in doing amiss. How much time is there spent in excessive sleep, or in needless recreations, or in unprofitable discourses? nay, how much time is spent in sin? All the days of a mans irregeneracy, are days of vanity. All that time (which as to the most of you hath been the greatest part of your lives) hath been utterly lost. Hence Paul speaks of his being born out of due time, 1 Cor. 15.8. Because afore his Conversion, his life was a death rather than a life, he lost a•l that time, even as if he had not been born into the World. An old man once said, when dying, I have lived but seven years, because he was converted but seven years before his death, and before that he made account he was as a man that did not live, as a man that had no time or being in the World.

Consider 4 That you have lost much precious time already; and therefore it is high ⟨p. 172⟩time to look about you, and to consider well how you may improve the present season, 1 Pet. 4.3. The time past of our life may suffice us, to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. So the time past which hath been mispent is enough and too much to be lost. Alas, men spend the greatest part of their time either in doing nothing, or in doing amiss. How much time is there spent in excessive sleep, or in needless recreations, or in unprofitable discourses? nay, how much time is spent in sin? All the days of a mans irregeneracy, are days of vanity. All that time (which as to the most of you hath been the greatest part of your lives) hath been utterly lost. Hence Paul speaks of his being born out of due time,