think you better, and come to Christ, and live as men that know what they have to do. If you will but see your former folly, and heartily bewail it, and set your hearts on the one thing needful, he will encourage you, and help you, and bid you welcome, and number you with his sons, though you have lived as his enemies. Though you have lived like swine and serpents, he will put you in his bosom, if you will but be washed and changed by his grace. Though you have set more by your worldly riches than by his glory, and have set more by the favour of mortal man, than by his favour, and though you have set more by your bellies, and your brutish pleasures, and little toys, than you have done by everlasting life, he will yet be merciful to you, and put up all these indignities at your hands, and take you into his dearest love, if you will but now become new creatures, and give your hearts to him that made them, and seek that first that is worth the finding, and lose not the rest of your lives and labour upon unprofitable things. What can you say against this offer? Is it not inconceivable and unspeakable mercy? O what would the damned give another day for such an offer? O what would you yourselves give another day for such an offer, if you now neglect it? What say you then, will you accept of this offer of mercy while it may be had, and close with grace, while grace would save you, or will you not? As ever you look for mercy in the hour of your distress when nothing but mercy can stand your souls in any stead, take mercy now while it may be had. Refuse it not when it is offered you, as you would not be refused by it when hell and desperation would devour you. If you slight it because it is free, you slight it because it is great, and therefore greatly to be valued. Think not hereafter to have it at your beck, if you neglect it now when it seeks for your acceptance. Do not say, I will a little longer keep my sins, and a little longer enjoy my pleasures, for I can have Christ's offer at any time before I die. O little dost thou know what a stab such a trifling purpose may give to the very heart of all thy hopes and happiness! and how terribly God may make thee know how ill he taketh thy unthankfulness and contempt! and how dear one other week of sinful pleasure may cost thy soul! In the name of God I warn you, do not so despise everlasting happiness! Do not so trample on the blood of Christ, if you would be saved by it!

Do not abuse the Spirit of grace, if you would be sanctified by it! Play not any longer with the consuming fire, the wrath of a jealous and Almighty God! Jest not with damnation! Though grace be now offered you, it will not be at your command. Despise this motion, and you may be out of hearing before the next. What can you expect, if you will slight such mercy, but either that death should shortly bring you to your reckoning, or that God should leave you to yourselves, and give you up to the hardness of your hearts. And if you will needs choose the world, and fleshly pleasure, and God and glory shall be thus contemptuously passed by, you may take your choice, and see what you will get by it. But remember what an offer you had this day, and that heaven was once within your reach, and that it might have been yours for ever if you would.

But because I am loath to leave you so, I will try by some such arguments as the reason of man must needs approve, Whether yet you may not be brought to yourselves, and yield to grace that you may be saved. And they shall be the arguments that lie before you here in the text.

1. Remember, it is necessity that is pleaded with you in my text. One thing is necessary. Necessity, and your own necessity, is such an argument, as one would think of itself should turn the scales, and fully resolve you, and put you past any further deliberation or delay. If necessity, your own necessity, and so great necessity to so great an end, will not prevail with you, what will? Necessity is that 'ingens telum,' that natural reason taketh to be irresistible. Men think they may do almost any thing, if they can say necessity commandeth it. Omnem legem frangit, magnum illud humanæ imbecillitatis patrocinium,' saith Seneca. What is it that necessity seemeth not sufficient to justify with the most? And we will grant the argument to be undeniable, if it be from absolute necessity indeed, and if men will not dream that it is more necessary to be rich, or honourable, or to live, than to be holy, and to be blessed with God, and to please him that created them. Ubi necessitas incumbit, non ultra disputandum est, sed celerrimè et fortiter agendum?' Words signify nothing against necessity. Reason is but hindering, troublesome folly, when it pleadeth against necessity. Omni arte, omni ratione efficacior necessitas. Curt.' In worldly matters how quick-sighted,

how resolute, how active is necessity! What conquerable difficulties will it not overcome! what labour will it not endure, if it have but the encouragement of hope! And yet this necessity is indeed no true necessity at all. For that which is necessity but to my credit, or estate, or health, or life, can be no more necessary than is my credit, and estate, and health, and life itself. When men do but fancy a necessity where there is none, yet that will carry them through thick and thin. But O sirs, you have a real, undeniable necessity to be holy, and to set yourselves to the work of your salvation; such a necessity as is founded in your nature, and laid on you by your Maker, and as all the true reason in the world will confess, to be indispensable necessity.

• Faxis ut libeat quod est necesse.

Make no more words then, but resolve and stir when it is a matter that must be done. It is pity and shame that the amiableness of God and holiness will not prevail with you of themselves. But if you cannot yet perceive them to be delectable, acknowledge them to be necessary. Be ashamed that pretended necessity for the body should be more powerful with others, than real necessity for salvation is with you. Look upon almost all the travail and labour that is under the sun, and all the diligence that is used here in the world, and consider whether it be not a thousandfold smaller necessity than I am now pleading with you, that setteth almost all on work? The rich will not toil and labour, but will take their ease, because they think they are under no necessity; but the poor will labour, because they must. Though the command of God to rich and poor should make them equally diligent in their several callings, in obedience to their Creator; yet many thousands that labour all the year in obedience to their own necessities, would soon give it over and take ease, if they could but be well maintained without it, notwithstanding the commands of God. And the poor that reproach the rich for idleness, would be idle themselves if they were but rich. The tradesman followeth his trade, and the husbandman his hard labour all the year, and what reason will they give you, if you ask them why they do it, but this, 'We cannot live else. We must do it to maintain ourselves and families.' And is not the reason

a thousand times stronger for our souls? May we not better say, We must please God, and set our hearts on the life to come, and mind and seek the one thing needful, whatever becomes of other things; for we cannot live else; we cannot be saved else.'

But

Necessity makes the traveller trudge from morning till night; and the carrier to follow his horses through fair and foul from year to year. It makes some dig into the bowels of the earth, in mines and coal-pits; and some to hale barges ; and some to cut through the terrible ocean, and venture their lives among the raging waves and storms; and some even to beg their bread in rags from door to door. And O what will not necessity do that can be done? And yet how many thousands trifle or do nothing for their souls, as if there were no necessity of being saved; or no necessity of being holy that we may be saved. When alas, all the necessity in the world is no necessity at all, in comparison of this. You must beg, or starve, or famish, if you do not work. you must burn in hell, if with fear and diligence you work not out your own salvation; (for all that it is God that worketh in you.) Phil. ii. 12. You must lie in prison if your debts be not paid. But you will be cast into outer darkness, if by the pardon of your sins, you be not discharged from your debt to God. You may become beggars if you be idle in your callings. But you will be the prisoners of hell, and shut out of all the happiness of the saints, if you labour not for the food that doth not perish, and strive not to enter in at the strait gate, and give not diligence to make your calling and election sure; John vi. 27. Matt. vii. 13. Luke xiii. 24. 2 Pet. i. 10. You must suffer hunger and nakedness if you have not food and raiment. But you must suffer everlastingly the wrath of God, if you have not the one thing necessary. You will be the scorn and laughingstock if you fall under their contempt, and lose your hoBut you will be the enemies of God, and hated by him, if you continue to contemn his grace.

of men,

nour.

O had you but seen the life to come, you would say, there is a necessity of attaining it! Had you been one hour in hell, you would think that there is a necessity of escaping it, and that there is no necessity to this.

What say you to all this? Is it not of truth and weight? Can you deny it? Or should you make light of it? None

but an infidel can deny it; and none but a deadhearted sinner can make light of it. Believe the word of God, and the truth of it will be past question with you. Consider but that you are men that have immortal souls, and the weight of it will appear inestimable to you; above contempt; above neglect. Believe it, sirs, you may as well see without light, and be supported without earth, or live without food, as be saved without holiness, or happy without the one thing necessary; Heb. xii. 14. John iii.3.5. Matt. xviii. 3. And when this is resolved of by God, and established as his standing law, and he hath told it you so oft and plainly, for any man now to say, 'I will yet hope for better; I hope to be saved on easier terms, without all this ado,' is no better than to set his face against the God of heaven, and instead of believing God, to believe the contradiction of his own ungodly heart; and to hope to be saved whether God will or not; and to give the lie to his Creator, under the pretence of trust and hope. It is indeed to hope for impossibilities. To be saved without holiness, is to see without eyes, and to live without life. And who is so foolish as to hope for this? Few of you are so unreasonable as to hope for a crop at harvest, without ploughing or sowing; or for a house without building; or for strength without eating and drinking; or to sleep and play, when you have nothing to maintain your families, and say, You hope that God will maintain both you and them. And yet this were a far wiser kind of hope, than to hope to be saved without the one thing necessary to salvation; and without a heart that is set upon it, and a life that is employed for it. It is the Holy Ghost that calleth you to answer the question, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" If you know how, then enter the lists with God, and dispute the cause with him. How will you escape, if you be neglecters of the only way that he hath provided for your escape? Is there any power or interest of men or angels that can procure your escape? How can that be done, that God hath resolved shall not be?

I beseech you now, beloved hearers, to remember this urgent motive of necessity, and use it when you are tempted to delay or trifle about the business of your salvation, as if it were some indifferent, needless thing. Without worldly riches you may be rich in faith: without worldly honours, you may have the honour of being the sons of God; and