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dressed souls! O filthy consciences, never cleansed from your pollutions, by the Spirit or blood of Christ! Have you not better use for your precious hours, than to be washing, and pinning, and dressing, and curling, and spotting, and powdering, till ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, when honest labourers have done one half of their day's work? While you are in health, were not six o'clock in the morning a fitter hour for you to be dressed, that you might draw near to the most holy God in holy prayer, and read his Word, and set your souls, and then your families, in order for the duties of the following day? I do not say that you may go no neater than poor labouring people, or that you may bestow no more time than they in dressing you: but I say, that for your souls and in your callings, you are bound by God to be as diligent as they and have no more time given you to lose than they, and that you should spend as little of it in neatifying you as you can: and be sensible that else the loss is your own: and that abundance of precious hours which your pride consumeth, will lie heavy one day upon your consciences: and then you shall confess,-I say you shall confess with aching hearts, that the duties you owed to God and man, and the care of your souls, and of your families, should have been preferred before your appearing neat and spruce to men. If you have but a journey to go, you can rise earlier and be sooner dressed: but for the good of your souls, and the redeeming of your precious time you cannot. O that God would but shew you what greater work you have to do with those precious hours: and how it will cut your hearts to think of them at last! If you lay but hopelessly sick of a consumption, you would be cured it is like of this proud disease, and bestow less of your time in adorning the flesh, which is hasting to the grave and rottenness. And cannot you now see how time and life consume? and what cause you have with all your care and diligence, to use them better before they are gone? I know they that are so much worse than childish, as prodigally to cast away so many hours in making themselves fine for the sight of men, and be not ashamed to come forth and shew their sin to others, will scarce want words to excuse their crime, and prove it lawful, (be they sense or nonsense.) But conscience itself shall answer all, when time is gone, and make

you wish you had been wiser. You know not, ladies and gallants, how precious a thing time is! You little feel what a price yourselves will set upon it at the last: you little consider what you have to do with it: you see not how it hasteth, and how near you stand to vast eternity! You little know how despised time will look a wakened conscience in the face! or what it is to be found unready to die! I know you lay not to heart these things: for if you did, you could not, I say, you could not, so lightly cast away your time. If all were true that you say, that indeed your place and honour requireth, that your precious morning hours be thus spent, I profess to you, I should pity you more than galley-slaves, and I would bless me from such a place and honour, and make haste into the course and company of the poor, and think them happy that may better spend their time. But indeed your excuses are frivolous and untrue, and do but shew that pride hath prevailed to captivate your reason to its service. For we know lords and ladies, as great as the rest of you, (though alas, too few,) that can quickly be up and dressed, and spend their early hours in prayer and adorning their souls, and can be content to come forth in a plain, and incurious attire; and, yet are so far from being derided, or thought the worse by any whose judgment is much to be regarded, that they are taken justly for the honour of their order: and if it were not that some few such keep up the honour of your rank, I will not tell you how little in point of morality it would be honoured.

Thief iv. Another time-wasting thief is, unnecessary pomp and curiosity in retinue, attendance, house, furniture, provision and entertainments; together with excess of compliment and ceremony, and servitude to the humours and expectations of time-wasters". I crowd them altogether, because they are all but wheels of the same engine, to avoid prolixity. Here also I must prevent the cavils of the guilty, by telling you that I reprove not all that in the rich, which I would reprove if it were in the poor: I intend not to level them, and judge them by the same measure, The rich are not so happy as to be so free as the poor, either * Nihil mihi magis quam pompa displicet; non solum quia mala, et humilitati contraria, sed quia difficilis, et quieti adversa est. Petrarch in vita sua.

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from the temptation, or the seeming necessity and obligation: let others pity the poor: I will pity the rich, who seem to be pinched with harder necessities than the even this seeming necessity of wasting their precious time in compliment, curiosity and pomp; which the happy poor may spend in the honest labours of their callings; wherein they may at once be profitable to the commonwealth, and maintain themselves, and meditate or confer of holy things: But yet I must say, that the rich shall give an account of time, and shall pay dear for that which unnecessary excesses do devour: and that instead of envying the state and curiosity of others, and seeking to excel or equal them to avoid their obloquy, they should contract and bring down all customs of excess, and shew their high esteem of time, and detestation of time-wasting curiosity; and imitate the most sober, grave and holy; and be a pattern to others of employing time in needful, great and manly things; I say manly; for so childish is this vice, that men of gravity and business do abhor it: and usually men of vanity that are guilty of it, lay it all on the women, as if they were ashamed of it, or it were below them. What abundance of precious time is spent, in unnecessary state of attendance, and provisions? What abundance under pretence of cleanliness and neatness is spent in needless curiosity about rooms, and furniture, and accommodations, and matters of mere pride, vain-glory, and ostentation, covered with the honest name of decency! What abundance is wasted in entertainments, and unnecessary visits, compliments, ceremony, and servitude to the humours of men of vanity? I speak not for nastiness, uncleanness, and uncomeliness: I speak not for a cynical morosity or unsociableness. When conscience is awakened, and you come to yourselves, and approaching death shall better acquaint you with the worth of time, you will see a mean between these two; and you will wish you had most feared the time-wasting prodigal extreme. Methinks you should freely give me leave to say, that though Martha had a better excuse than you, and was cumbered about many things for the entertainment of such a guest as Christ himself, (with all his followers,) who looked for no curiosity, yet Mary is more approved of by b Nimia omnia nimium exhibent negotium.

Christ, who neglected all this, to redeem the time for the good of her soul, by sitting at his feet to hear his word : she chose the better part, which shall not be taken from her. Remember, I pray you, that one thing is necessary: I hope I may have leave to tell you, that if by you or your servants, God, and your souls, and prayer, and reading the Scriptures, and the profitable labours of an honest calling, be all or any of them neglected, while you or they are neatifying this room, or washing out that little spot, or setting straight the other wrinkle, or are taken up with feminine trifling, proud curiosities, this is preferring of dust before gold, of the least before the greatest things: and to say, that decency is commendable, is no excuse for neglecting God, your souls, or family, or leaving undone any one greater work, which you or your servants might have been doing that while: I say, any work that is greater all things considered. O that you and your families would but live, as those that see how fast death cometh! how fast time goeth! and what you have to do! and what your unready souls yet want! This is all that I desire of you: and then I warrant you, it would save you many a precious hour, and cut short your works of curiosity, and deliver you from your slavery to pride, and the esteem of vain time-wasters.

Thief v. Another time-wasting sin, is needless and tedious feastings, gluttony, and tippling: which being of the same litter, I set together. I speak not against moderate, seasonable, and charitable feasts: but alas, in this luxurious, sensual age, how commonly do men sit two hours at a feast, and spend two more in attending it before and after, and not improving the time in any pious or profitable discourse: yea, the rich spend an hour ordinarily in a common meal, while every meal is a feast indeed; and they fare as their predecessor, Luke xvi. deliciously or sumptuously every day. Happy are the poor, that are free also from this temptation. You spend not so much time in the daily addresses of your souls to God, and reading his Word, and taking an account of the affairs of conscience, and preparing for death; as you do in stuffing your guts, perhaps at

c Convivia quæ dicuntur (cum sint commessationes modestiæ et bonis moribus inimica) semper mihi displicuerunt; laboriosum, et inutileratus vocare et vocari, &c. Idem.

one meal. And in taverns and alehouses among the pots, how much time is wasted by rich and poor! O remember, while you are eating and drinking, what a corruptible piece of flesh you are feeding and serving; and how quickly those mouths will be filled with dust? and that a soul that is posting so fast unto eternity, should find no time to spare for vanity and that you have important work enough to do, which if performed, will afford you a sweeter and a longer feast.

Thief v1. Another time-wasting sin, is idle talk what abundance of precious time doth this consume. Hearken to most men's discourse when they are sitting together, or working together, or travelling together, and you shall hear how little of it is any better than silence: (and if not better, it is worse.) So full are those persons of vanity who are empty, even to silence, of any thing that is good, that they can find and feed a discourse of nothing, many hours and days together; and as they think, with such fecundity and floridness of style, as deserveth acceptance if not applause, I have marvelled oft at some wordy preachers, with how little matter they can handsomely fill up an hour! But one would wonder more to hear people fill up, not an hour, but a great part of their day, and of their lives, and that without any study at all, and without any holy and substantial subject, with words, which if you should write them all down and peruse them, you would find that the sum and conclusion of them is nothing. How self-applaudingly and pleasingly they can extempore talk idly and of nothing a great part of their lives! I have heard many of them marvel at a poor unlearned Christian, that can pray extempore many hours together in very good order and well-composed words: but are they not more to be marvelled at, that can very handsomely talk of nothing ten times as long, with greater copiousness, and without repetitions, and that extempore, when they have not that variety of great commanding subjects to be the matter of their speech? I tell you, when time must be reviewed, the consumption of so much in idle talk, will appear to have been no such venial sin, as empty, careless sinners now imagine.

Thief VII. Another thief which by the aforesaid means would steal your time, is vain and sinful company. Among

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