The saints everlasting rest

Alas! you do not see or feel what case their souls are in, when they are in hell, for want of your faithful admonition. Little know you what many a soul may now be feeling, who have been your neighbours and acquaintance, and died in their sins, on whom you never bestowed one hour's sober advice for preventing their unhappiness. If you knew their misery, you would now do more to bring them out of hell: but, alas! it is too late, you should have done it while they were with you; it is now too late. As one said of physicians, That they were the most happy men, because all their good deeds and cures were seen above ground to their praise, but all their mistakes and neglects were buried out of sight. So I may say to you, many a neglect of yours to the souls about you, may be now buried with those souls in hell, out of your sight, and therefore now it doth not much trouble you; but alas! they feel it, though you feel it not. Jeremiah cried out, My bowels, my bowels, I cannot hold my peace, because of a temporal destruction ⟨p. 225⟩of his people: and do not our bowels yearn? And can we hold our peace at men's eternal destruction?

2. Consider, What a rate Christ did value souls at, and what he hath done towards the saving of them: he thought them worth his blood, and shall not we think them worth the breath of our mouths? Will you not do a little, where he hath done so much?

3. Consider, What a deal of guilt this neglect doth lay upon thy soul. First, thou art guilty of the murder and damnation of all those souls whom thou dost neglect. He that standeth by, and seeth a man in a pit, and will not pull him out if he can, doth drown him. And he that standeth by while thieves rob him, or murderers kill him, and will not help him if he can, is accessary to the fact. And so he that will silently suffer men to damn their souls, or will let Satan and the world deceive them, and not offer to help them, will certainly be judged guilty of damning them. And is not this a most dreadful consideration? O sirs, how many souls then have every one of us been guilty of damning! What a number of our neighbours and acquaintance are dead, in whom we discerned no signs of sanctification, and we never once plainly told them of it, or how to be recovered! If you had been the cause but of burning a man's house through your negligence, or of undoing him, or destroying his body, how would it trouble you as long as you lived? If you had but killed a man unadvisedly, it would much disquiet you. We have known those that have been guilty of murder, that could never sleep quietly after, nor have one comfortable day, their own consciences did so vex and torment them. O what a heart must thou have, that hast been guilty of murdering such a multitude of precious souls! Remember this, when thou lookest thy friend or carnal