SECTION XVI.

The contemplation of our approaching change may assist us to mortify the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life; to cure ambition and promote contentment.

"ALL that is in the world," saith the Apostle, "is the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life." The dust and ashes of our own mortality, duly considered and applied, will help to deaden and extinguish each of these. By the pride of life, we lift up ourselves against heaven, and despise our Maker. By the lust of the flesh, we over-love and indulge the body, and study to gratify the sensual appetite. By the lust of the eyes, our desires are immoderate after temporal and external goods. The thought of our approaching end hath a tendency to oppose and mortify these lusts; to humble us before God; to take us off from the inordinate love of the body; and to moderate our passions to earthly things. It may help us against pride, by showing us the infinite distance between the eternal self-sufficient God, and such poor dust as we, who are but of yesterday; and, if he uphold us not, and maintain our souls in life, shall be laid in the dust to-morrow. It will remind us of his justice against sin, the parent of death, and of all the miseries of our mortal state; and convince us of our weakness to resist his will, to avoid his wrath. As to our fond affection to the body, it

may instruct us, that it deserves not to be so much accounted of; it will open our eyes to discern the preference of our immortal souls, and what concerns them, to the interest of a perishing body. It may convince us that we are cruel and unkind to our very bodies by over-loving them, because we thereby contribute to their eternal sufferings; and so teach us to love and use our bodies as servants to our souls in this world, and expecting to share in glory with them after the resurrection. It may also help to moderate our desires after earthly goods, and so cure the lust of the eyes, by letting us see the vanity, uncertainty, and short duration, of these things, and their insufficiency to make us happy and give us

true content.

The thoughts of an approaching change may, if any thing will do it, damp the mirth of the luxurious epicure, and strike him into a fit of trembling, as the handwriting on the wall did Belshazzar. It may discover the distraction of living in pleasure, and of care to please the senses, and the fleshly appetite, when the end is so near. It may likewise check the folly of ambitious designs; that men should make so much ado to get into slippery places, and whence they may so easily fall. Where, being puffed up with vain applause, they forget themselves and their latter end, till their life and glory expire together. Where are now the great, and mighty, and honourable, who have made such a noise in the world? What is now the difference between the dust of an Alexander or Cesar, and that of their meanest slaves or captives? Could their dignities and earthly glory preserve any of them from the stroke of death,

or the judgment of God? or, without repentance, from his condemning sentence?

Think, O my soul! how little will it shortly signify, whether I have been known and honoured among men or not, any farther than God may be glorified by it. How should it suppress vainglory,

to think of being one day esteemed and worshipped, reverenced and applauded, by dying men, and laid in the grave the next! Let me rather seek that

glory and honour to which immortality is annexed; and labour to be accepted with God, at whose bar I must be judged, endeavouring to keep the testimony of a good conscience; and then it is no matter whether I pass through good report or evil report: no contempt, or frowns, or threatenings, of men need then discourage me. Though I should be trampled on by the foot of pride, while others are happily in a dream for a little while, and, it may be, have a prosperous passage to damnation; I will rather thank God for delivering me from their temptations, and giving me the opportunity and call to hasten my preparations for a better world.

Let God dispose of my condition here, and reputation too, as best shall please his sovereign will ; only be pleased to keep me upright, and to preserve me from everlasting shame and confusion of face, after the general resurrection and final judgment. Vouchsafe me a portion now in thy approving love, and own me for thine at last, in the great and terrible day of reckoning; that then I may hear the blessed welcome, and enter into the joy of my Lord.

SECTION XVII.

The same argument considered farther, as dissuasive from worldliness and earthly-mindedness; and as proper to confute the vanity of long projects and great designs for this world.

ARE the years of my life but few, and they hastening to a period? and may this be my last? Let me not then greedily covet riches and abundance, and waste my little time to scrape together large provisions for many years to come, when I have no assurance to see the end of this. Is it becoming such a belief to toil from day to day, that I may lay up that which I must so soon leave? as if I were to spend an eternity here on earth, and in the mean while neglect the one thing necessary. Am I not upon the shore of eternity? May not the next tide

carry me off? And shall I spend my whole life in diversions from the main business of it? Have I nothing else to do but to gather shells, (if they were pearls, the absurdity were still the same,) and pile them up in heaps, till I am snatched away past all recovery? Shall I be regardless of an eternal state, and run the hazard of being undone for ever, by solicitous care about pretended necessaries for a long abode on earth, (much less for superfluities,) when I am not certain of the possession this one year ? Shall I magnify and admire what is so soon to be parted with? Value myself upon these things, so as to despise those that have less, and envy such as

have more! and suffer my mind to be distempered, and my passions immoderate, on every change of these things!

Though I know, besides my own mortality, that, to enforce the argument, there is a principle of corruption in all these things; that our very manna here, in a little while, will stink; and bread, which is the staff of life, moulder; our richest garments wax old and rot; silver and gold rust; and the greatest beauty wither; and every thing that is earthly decay and perish: and shall not this teach me to sit loose from all such things? Can I imagine, that in my last hour it will be easier to part with much than little? Or better, in the day of judgment, to have a great estate to answer for than a less one?

We read, concerning the patriarch Abraham, (who rightly understood the transitory nature of riches and his own mutable condition,) that the only purchase he made with his riches was a grave; choosing to take possession of the land promised him, rather by a mark of his parting with it, than of his possessing it. Did I think oftener and more seriously, O my soul! of tarrying here but a little while, I should more easily be persuaded that a little of this world were sufficient to carry me through it. I should consider more that my heaven-born soul is made and designed for another and endless world: and, therefore, should not so far "forget his own people, and Father's house," as eagerly to pursue and seek what is suited only to the body for a little while; and whereof a little, with contentment, will be sufficient. The same reflection may be used to contract our