and as fure as death, judgement will follow And as the sentence is then, fo will every one's lot hold on to eternal ages, without ever coming to a period.

Confidering therefore, how unchangeable our state will be, whether in woe or blifs; and how our everlasting fortunes depend upon the use we make of our time now; we are infinitely concerned to redeem what is loft, with a very quick hand, left our loffes prove utterly irrecoverable.

The time here is short at the best: The pleasures of fin are but for a season: The world paffeth away gradually: People every day go awa before us: And a few feet of earth win in a little time ferve to hold, the most infatiable and troublesome man that is in it now.

It would be a wife thing to look forward, and to confider, in what a little space there will be an end of a man's fins and vanities here. In a few years, pofterity (to be fure) will see a vast alteration: There, the haughty head laid low; there, the unconscionable oppreffors cut down; there, the luxurious thrown to nourish and fatten worms;

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worms; there, the envious eye closed; there, the mouth of the profaner stopt; and there, a full end put to vicious courses here: in all which time, the fouls of those miferable wretches are gone off, with an eternity of guilt upon them, to an eternity of punishment.

All which things we should seriously lay to heart; and from thence be induced, to make the right ufe of our present time, and to redeem that which is past. Whereunto nothing can quicken our endeavours fo much as this one thing, namely, To confider, what will become of us, if we do not.

SERMON XVIII.

Be doing daily.

[From Dr. PELLING on Time. ]

HEB. iii. 13.

Exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day; left any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of fin.

T

HE better and wifer fort of beathens advised men, to make choice of a scheme of virtue for the rule of their lives; and to order all their actions according to it day by day. As thus; To begin their works with earnest prayers to God; to honour God before all things; to have a religious regard for oaths; to reverence their parents; to love their friends; to delight in good men; to keep the body, with all its faculties and defires, in subjection;

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tion; for very fhame to abstain from every thing that is evil, both abroad and in private; to practife virtue with fincerity of heart; to look upon riches as a thing that perifheth, and as fuch to flight them; to ftudy how to resemble God in the difpofitions of the mind, and to make that one's aim and pleafure; to be contented with one's condition, and at all times to fubmit to God's providence, who often gives good men these outward matters with a fparing hand; to be inflexible and conftant in a virtuous course; to weigh one's actions well beforehand, and to confider the nature and confequence of them; to obferve temperance and moderation; to be meek, and patient, and juft, and cautious in all cafes.

Such rules as thefe, fome of the ancient moralifts directed people to live by daily. And then, every night before they went to fleep, they directed them to examine themfelves ftrictly, how they had spent the day; that, if they had lived according to rule, they might have for their prefent reward,

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the pleasures and joys of a good confcience; but, if they had tranfgreffed, that they might repent, and thereby learn the better how to amend their lives the day following. To this end, before you take your repofe, fay they, ask yourself, wherein you have tranfgreffed; what you have done; and fo, look over all your actions the day past, two or three times, that no one thing may escape scrutiny and examination.

This was great advice, efpecially for heathens to give. But the fame falls with a redoubled weight upon our confciences, when enforced by the commands of the great author of our religion and immortal happiness. The covenant given us by our Saviour, carries with it a profpect of far better things than the heathens had any affurance of, and therefore bindeth our Saviour's injunction the more firmly upon us, when he requireth us to be earnest and conftant in our duty, and to fuffer no day to pass unprofitably by us; but to exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day,

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