wickedness do hinder you from choosing aright. You have a price in your hands, but fools have not a heart to their own good; Prov. xvii. 16. I know that you want both wisdom and a sanctified will; and I know that your minds and wills are contrarily disposed. You need not tell me that you are wilful and wicked, when there must be so many words spoken, and so many books written, and so much mercy and patience of God, and so many afflictions from his hand, and all will not serve to make you choose the better part. But if you were willing, if you were truly willing, the principal part of the work were done. For if you are willing, Christ is willing; and if Christ be willing, and you be willing, what can hinder your salvation?

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Having laid this groundwork from the plain word of God, methinks I may with this advantage now plead the case, even with common reason. One thing is needful; the good part is that one; and this is tendered to you by the Lord. What is it then that you do make choice of? and what do you resolve? May you have Christ, and pardon, and everlasting life, and will you not have them? Shall it be said of you another day, that you had your choice, whether you would have Christ and life, or sin and death; and you chose destruction and refused life? I beseech thee, reader, whosoever thou art that readest these lines, that thou wouldst a little turn thine ears to God, and withdraw thyself from the delusions of the flesh and world, and use thy reason for thy everlasting peace; and consider with thyself what a dreadful thing it will be, if thou be everlastingly shut out of the presence of God, upon thy own choice? And if thou lose thy part in Christ, and pardon, and everlasting glory upon thy own choice. And if thou must lie in hellfire, and conscience must tell thee there for ever, Thou hast but the fruit of thine own choice. Heaven was set open to me as well as others. I had life, and time, and teaching, and persuasions as well as others; but I chose the pleasure of sin for a season, though I was told and assured that hell would follow; and now I have that which I made choice of, and taste but the fruit of my own wilfulness! Will not such gripes of conscience be a hellish torment of themselves, and an intolerable vexation, if thou hadst no more? Had you rather have sin, than Christ and holiness? Alas, I see by your lives you had! But had you rather have hell than

God and glory ? If not, then choose not the way to hell. Why do you give God such good words, and prefer your sin when you have done, before him? Why do you speak so well of Christ and heaven, and yet refuse them? Why do you speak so ill of sin and hell, and yet choose them to the loss of your salvation? Surely if you were soundly persuaded that Christ is better than the world, and holiness than sin, you would choose that which you say is the best. For that which men think indeed to be the best, and best for them, they will choose and seek after. And therefore, when you have said all that you can in commendation of grace and a holy life, no wise men will believe that you are heartily persuaded of the truth of what you say, as long as you run away from Christ, and follow the flesh, and take that course that is contrary to your profession. For that which you like best you will certainly choose and seek with the greatest care and diligence. Now you have your choice; if you would have the better part, now choose it.

5. I have one other motive yet from the text to persuade you to choose the better part. If you choose it, it shall never be taken from you. You hear this is the resolution of Christ himself concerning Mary's choice, and that which is spoken of her will be as true of you, if you make the same choice. If all the enemies you have in the world should endeavour to deprive you of Christ and your salvation, they cannot do it against your choice. If by power or by policy they would rob you of your portion, they cannot do it. For which way should they do it? They cannot turn the heart of God against you, nor make him break his covenant with you, nor repent him of his gift and calling which he hath extended to you. For he is unchangeable, and loveth you with an everlasting love; Mal. iii. 6. Jer. xxxi. 3. Isa. liv. 8. Jer. xxxiii. 20, 21. 23. 1. 5. Rom. xi. 29. They cannot undermine the rock that you are built upon, nor batter the fortress of your souls, nor overcome your great Preserver and defence, nor take you out of the hands of Christ; Psal. lxxiii. 26. xxxi. 2, 3. lxii. 2. lix. 9. 16. John x. 28. Cast not away the salvation that is offered you, and then never fear lest it be taken from you. See that you choose the better part, and resolvedly choose it, and it will be certainly your own for ever. For man cannot take it from you, nor devils cannot take it from you, and God will not take it

from you. Rust and moths will not corrupt this treasure; nor can thieves break through and steal it from you; Matt. vi. 19, 20.

But you cannot say so of worldly riches. If you choose to be lords and princes on the earth, you cannot have your choice; but if you could, you cannot keep it. If you choose the wealth and credit of the world, and were sure to get it, you were as sure to leave it. For naked you came into the world, and naked you must go out; Job i.21. If you choose your ease, and mirth, and pleasure, these will be taken from you. If you choose the satisfying of your fleshly desires, and all the delight and prosperity that the world can afford you, yet all must be taken from you, yea quickly and easily taken from you. Alas! one stroke of an apoplexy, or a few fits of a fever, or the breaking of a small vein, or many hundred of the like effectual means, are ready at the beck of God, to take you from all that you have gathered for your flesh. And then whose shall all these things be? None of yours I am sure, nor will they redeem your souls from death or hell; Luke xii. 20. Psal. xlix. 7. If you be in honour, you abide not in it, but are (as to your body) as the beasts that perish. If you think to perpetuate your houses and your names, this your way is but your folly, though your posterity go on to approve your sayings, and succeed you in your sins; Psal. xlix. 11-13. "The worldly wise man doth perish with the fool as sheep they are laid in the grave. Death shall feed on him, and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning;" ver. 10. 14. "They shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb;" Psal. xxxvii. 2. "I have seen the wicked in great prosperity, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree; yet he passed away, and lo he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found;" ver. 35, 36.

You think it a fine thing to have the fulness of the creature, to be esteemed with the highest, and fed and clothed with the best, and fare deliciously every day, as the rich man, Luke xvi. But hath he not paid dear, think you for his riches and pleasure by this time? His feeding and fulness was quickly at an end; but his torment is not yet ended, nor ever will be. You think it a brave thing to clamber up to riches, and that which you call greatness and honour in the world; but how quickly, how terribly must you come

down! "Go into the sanctuary of God and understand your end. Surely God hath set them in slippery places, and casteth them down into destruction. How are they brought to desolation as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakeneth, so at the awakening, shall their image (or shadow of honour) be despised;" Psal. lxxiii. 17-20.

How short is the pleasure, and how long is the pain! How short is the honour, and how long is the shame! What is it under the sun that is everlasting? You have friends, but will they dwell with you here for ever? You have houses, but how long will you stay in them? It is but as yesterday since your houses had other inhabitants, and your towns and countries other inhabitants, and where are they all now? You have health, but how soon will you consume in sickness? You have life, but how soon will it end in death? You have the pleasure of sin; you say unto yourselves, “Eat, drink, and be merry," but how soon will all the mirth be marred, and turned into sadness, everlasting sadness! When you hear," Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul, and then whose shall these things be?" Luke xii. 20. O miserable wretch! If thou hadst chosen God instead of thy sin, and the everlasting kingdom instead of this world, thou wouldst not have been thus cast off in thy extremity. God would have stuck better to thee. Heaven would have proved a more durable inheritance. For it is a “kingdom that cannot be moved;" Heb. xii. 28. The day is near when thy despairing soul must take up this lamentation, My dearest friends are now forsaking me. I must part with all that I laboured for, and delighted in. I have drunk up all my part in pleasure, and there is no more left. My merry company, and honours, and recreations are past and gone; I shall eat, and drink, and sport no more. But God would not have used me thus, if I had set my heart upon him and his kingdom. O that I had chosen him and made him my portion, and spent these thoughts, and cares, and labours, for the obtaining of his love, and promised glory, which I spent in the pleasing and providing for the flesh; then I should have had a happiness that death could not deprive me of, and a crown that fadeth not away. Neither life, nor death, nor any creature could have separated me from his love. I need not then have gone out of the world as a pri

soner out of the gaol, to the bar, and to the place of execution. My departing soul should not then need to have been afraid of falling into the hands of an unreconciled God, and so into the hands of the devils as his executioners, nor of passing out of the flesh to hell.'

0 poor sinners, for how short a pleasure do you sell your hopes of everlasting blessedness, and run yourselves into endless pains! O what comparison is there between the time of your pleasure, and the everlastingness of your punishment! How short a while is the cup at your mouths or the drink in your bellies! or the harlot in your em bracements! or the wealth of the world in your possession! And how long a time must you pay for this in hell! How quickly are your merry hours past! but your torments will never be past. When your corpses are laid in the grave, men can say, Now he hath done his satisfying the flesh and following the world,' but never man can truly say, Now he hath done suffering for it.' Your life of sin is passing as a dream, and your honours as a shadow, and all your business as a tale that is told; but the life of glory which you rejected for this, would have endured for evermore. Suppose as many thousand years as there are sands on the sea, or piles of grass on the whole earth, or hairs on the heads of all the men in the world, yet when these many are past, the joy of the saints, and the torments of the wicked are as far from an end as ever they were. The eternal God doth give them a duration, and make them eternal.

When our joys are at the sweetest, this thought must needs be part of that sweetness, that their sweetness shall never have an end. If our short foretaste be joy unspeakable and full of glory, what shall we call that joy which flows from the most perfect fruition and perpetuation? 1 Pet. i. 7,8. We have joy here, but alas how seldom! alas, how small in comparison of what we may there expect! Some joy we have, but how oft do melancholy, or crosses, or losses in the world, or temptations, or sins, or desertions interrupt it! Our sun is here most commonly under a cloud, and too often in an eclipse; and we have the night as often as the day. Yea, our state is usually a winter; our days are cold and short, and our nights are long. But when the flourishing state of glory comes, we shall have no intermissions nor eclipses. "The path of the just is as the shining light,