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but if they be set in order, and I know their places, it spares me that time. So is it in the right timing of our duties. Direct. IV. Live continually as under the government of God; and keep conscience tender, and in the performance of its office; and always be ready to render an account to God and conscience of what you do.' If you live as under the government of God, you will be still doing his work; you will be remembering his judgment; you will be trying your work whether it be such as he approveth: this will keep you from all time-wasting vanities. If you keep conscience tender, it will presently check and reprehend you for your sin: and when you lose but a minute of time, it will tell you of the loss: whereas a " seared conscience" is "past feeling," and will give you over to " lasciviousness," and will make but a jest at the loss of time: or at least will not effectually tell you either of the sin or loss. If you keep conscience to its office, it will ask you frequently, what you are doing? and try your works: it will take account of time when it is spent, and ask you, what you have been doing? and how you have spent every day and hour? And (as Seneca could say) "He will be the more careful what he doth, and how he spends the day, who looks to be called to a reckoning for it every night." This will make the foreseen day of judgment have such a continual awe upon you, as if you were presently going to it; while conscience, with respect to it, is continually forejudging you. Whereas they that have silenced or discarded conscience, are like schoolboys that bolt their master out of doors, who do it with a design to spend the time in play, which they should have spent in learning: but the afterreckoning pays for all.

Here, for the further direction of your consciences, I shall lay you down a few rules, for the right spending of your time. 1. Spend it in nothing (as a deliberate moral act) which is not truly, directly, or remotely an act of obedience to some law of God: (of mere natural acts, which are no objects of moral choice, I speak not.) 2. Spend it in nothing which you know must be repented of. 3. Spend it in nothing which you dare not, or may not warrantably pray for a blessing on from God. 4. Spend it in nothing Ephes. iv. 19. 1 Tim. iv. 2.

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which you would not review at the hour of death, by an awakened, wellinformed mind. 5. Spend it in nothing which you would not hear of in the day of judgment. 6. Spend it in nothing which you cannot safely and comfortably be found doing, if death should surprise you in the act. 7. Spend it in nothing which fleshpleasing persuadeth you to, against your consciences, or with a secret grudge or doubting of your consciences. 8. Spend it in nothing which hath not some tendency, directly or remotely, to your ultimate end, the pleasing of God, and the enjoying him in love for ever. 9. Spend it in nothing which tendeth to do more hurt than good: that would do a great, hurt to yourself or others, under pretence of doing some little good, which perhaps may better be done another way. 10. Lastly, Spend it in nothing which is but a smaller good, when a greater should be done.

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Direct. v. Do your best to settle yourselves where there are the greatest helps and smallest hindrances to the redeeming of your time. And labour more to accommodate your habitation, condition, and employments to the great ends of your life and time, than to your worldly honour, ease, or wealth.' Live where is best trading for the soul: you may get more by God's ordinary blessing in one year, in a godly family, or in fruitful company, and under an able, godly minister, than in many years in a barren soil, among the ignorant, dead-hearted, or profane, where we must say, as David, "I held my peace even from good, while the wicked is before me." And when we must do all the good we do through much opposition; and meet with great disadvantages and difficulties, which may quickly stop such dull and backward hearts as ours. If you will prefer your profit before your souls in the choice of your condition, and will plunge yourselves into distracting business and company, your time will run in a wrong, unprofitable channel.

Direct. VI. Contrive beforehand with the best of your skill, for the preventing of impediments, and for the most successful performance of your work.' If you leave all to the very time of doing, you will have many hindrances rise before you, and make you lose your time, which prudent forecast might have prevented. As for the improving the b Psal. xxxix. 1, 2.

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Lord's day, if you do not beforehand so order your business, that all things may give place to holy duties, you will meet with so many disturbances and temptations, as will lose you much of your time and benefit: so for family duties, and secret duties; and meditations, and studies, and the works of your callings. If you do not forecast what hindrance is like to meet you, that you may prevent it before the time, you must lose much time, and suffer much disappointment. Direct. v11. Endure patiently some smaller inconvenience and loss, for the avoiding of greater, and for the redeeming of time for greater duties: and let little things be resolutely cast out of your way, when they would draw out your time by insensible degrees.' The devil would cunningly steal that from you by drops, which he cannot get you to cast away profusely at once: he that will not spend prodigally by the pounds, may run out by not regarding pence. You shall have the pretences of decency and seemliness, and civility, and good manners, and avoiding offence, and censure, and of some necessity too, to draw out your precious time from you by little and little; and if you are so easy as to yield, it will almost all be wasted by this temptation. As, if you be ministers of Christ, whose time must be spent in your studies, and pulpits, and in conference with your people, and visiting them, and watching over them, and it is your daily groans that time is short and work is long, and that you are forced to omit so many needful studies, and pass by so many needy souls, for want of time; yet if you look not well about you, and will not bear some censure and offence, you shall lose even the rest of the time, which now you do improve. Your friends about you will be tempting and telling you, O this friend must needs be visited, and the other friend must be civilly treated; you must not shake them off so quickly: they look for more of your time and company: you are much obliged to them they will say you are uncivil and morose: such a scholar comes to be acquainted with you; and he will take it ill, and misrepresent you to others, if you allow him not time for some familiar discourse. It is one that never was with you before, and never took up any of your time: (and so saith the next and the next as well as he.) Such an one visited you, and you must needs visit him again. There is

this journey or that which must needs be gone: and this business and that which must needs be done.' Yea, one's very family occasions will steal away all his time, if he watch not narrowly: we shall have this servant to talk to, and the other to hear, and our relations to respect, and abundance of little things to mind, so little as not to be named by themselves, about meat, and drink, and clothes, and dressing, and house, and goods, and servants, and work, and tradesmen, and messengers, and marketing and payments, and cattle, and a hundred things not to be reckoned up, that will every one take up a little of your time, and those littles set together will be all. As the covetous usurer, that to purchase a place of honour, agreed for a month, to give a penny to every one that asked him: which being quickly noised abroad in the city, there came so many for their pence, as took all that he had, and made him quit his place of honour, because he had nothing left to maintain it. So perhaps you are an eminent, much valued minister; and this draweth upon you such a multitude of acquaintance, every one expecting a little of your time, that among them all, they leave you almost none for your studies, whereby not only your conscience is wounded, but your parts are quenched, and your work is starved and poorly done, and so your admirers themselves begin to set as light by you as by others, for that which is the effect of their own importunity. And as in our yearly expences of our money, there goeth near as much in little matters, not to be named by themselves, and incidental, unexpected charges, of which no account can be given beforehand, as doth in food, and raiment, and the ordinary charges which we foreknow and reckon upon just so it will be with your precious time, if you be not very thrifty and resolute, and look not well to it: you will have such abundance of little matters, scarce fit to be named, which will every one require a little, and one begin where the other endeth, that you will find in the review, when time is gone, that satan was too cunning for you, and cheated you by drawing you into seeming necessities. This is the grand reason why marriage and housekeeping are so greatly inconvenient to a pastor of the church, that can avoid them; because they bring upon him such abundance of these little diversions, which cannot be foreseen. In this

case a conscionable man (in what calling soever) must be resolute and when he hath endeavoured with reason to satisfy expectants, and put by diversions, if that will not serve, he must neglect them, and cast them off, and break away, though he lose by it in his estate, or his repute, or his peace itself, and though he be censured for it to be imprudent, uncivil, morose, or neglective of his friends: God must be pleased, whoever be displeased: we must satisfy our minds with his alone approbation, instead of all: time must be spared, whatever be lost or wasted: and the great things must be done, whatever become of the less; though where both may be done, and the lesser hinder not the greater, and rob us not of time from necessary things, there we must have a care of both.

Direct. VIII. Labour to go always furnished and well provided for the performance of every duty which may occur.' As he that will not lose his time in preaching, must be well provided; so he that will not lose his time in solitariness, must be always furnished with matter for profitable meditation: and he that would redeem his time in company, must be always furnished with matter for profitable discourse he that is full will be ready to pour out to others, and not be silent and lose his time for want of matter, or skill, or zeal; for in all these three your provision doth consist. An ignorant, empty person wants matter for his thoughts and words: an imprudent person wants skill to use it: a careless, cold, indifferent person, wants life to set his faculties on motion, and oil and poise to set the wheels of his soul and body a-going. Bethink you in the morning what company you are like to meet, and what occasions of duty you are like to have; and provide yourselves accordingly before you go, with matter and resolution. Besides the general preparative of habitual knowledge, charity, and zeal, which is the chief; you should also have your particular preparations for the duties of each day. A workman that is strong and healthful, and hath all his tools in readiness and order, will do more in a day, than a sick man, or one that wanteth tools, or keeps them dull and unfit for use, will do in many. 66 The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment:" (and no wonder, when) "The law of his God is in his heart: none of his steps

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