we are not able to call any more than the present NOW our own? Consider,

2. That your neglecting this call which God has given you, may make your death less easy, and your account more dreadful. Should you stifle any convictions which may have broken in upon your minds, by the blessing of God upon what you have now heard; forbear to put in execution the purposes formed in favour of God, and your souls, as you do the devil the greatest pleasure, so you may find when death comes, that you have doubly armed that King of terrors. As your guilt will be hereby aggravated, so your condemnation will be more severe in the next world.

You are invited to serve yourselves, to provide against the most shocking extremities; I have been endeavouring to help your hope and joy: but we must leave them in God's hands, to make what has been delivered the words of eternal life.

SERMON VI.

HIDING OUR DEATH, A CALL TO WATCHFULNESS.

We are to stand or fall forever, as ready or unready at Christ's coming. The Christian passes by death into fulness of joy; hypocrites suffer by death the punishment of loss, and the punishment of sense; miss heaven, and are cast into the lake of fire. Enlarging on these heads, lets us into the subject contained in the fourth proposition.

There is one more behind, which may profitably employ our present thoughts. It is this:

Prop. V. That our being left in the dark about the time of our death, and the Judgment day, when assured of the certainty of both, should be a sufficient motive to our watchfulness, that we may be found in peace. Our Lord infers this as a conclusion naturally arising from the main doctrine treated of in the preceding parable: Watch, therefore, for ye know not either the day or the hour, wherein the Son of man cometh.

What man can believe that there is an event before him, in which the welfare of a soul for eternity is concerned, one that is infallibly certain, and cannot but come to pass, may take place the next year, or month, or week, or day, or hour, or

moment, and which of them a secret to him; what man thinks, (with this state of the case in his view) who must not own that the advice carries strength and propriety in it, when he is put upon a constant expectation of what may overtake him in an instant? It is giving up the character of a man and a Christian at once; and offering violence to the light of reason as well as revelation, to refuse be ing determined by such evidence as this.

In the further prosecution of this doctrine, I shall endeavour,

I. To explain the nature of this duty, for the more effectual recommendation of which, this parable is instituted by our Lord.

II. Show you the force of this reasoning, when this duty is urged from the consideration of the Son of man's coming in a day, and at an hour that we know not of.

III. Offer something for vindicating the Divine conduct, in thus hiding from us the time of our death. We shall then add,

IV. Such practical reflections as may be a fit close to this subject.

I. Let us inquire into the nature of this duty, with a view to the recommending which, our Saviour institutes. this parable. To proceed with greater clearness, suffer me to reassume this one observation, viz. That as in the chapter before my text, Christ had been pressing watchfulness upon his disciples, as that was opposed to intemperance, the giving into luxury, and a brutish in

dulgence of the passions and appetites; so in this chapter he inculcates the same duty, but taken in opposition to security, and as consisting in a readiness to meet him at his coming. If you compare what occurs from the thirty seventh verse of the foregoing chapter, with what is offered in the thirteenth verse of this chapter, in its connexion with the context, you will see that there is room for this distinction. This duty was not limited in its obligation to the disciples of our Lord, no, nor to such as were Israelites according to the flesh, but equally concerns all who have heard of his name, and are begotten to the hope of Christ's second coming. This scripture is not of private interpretation; but what is said to one, is said to all of us, watch.

There are these two things supposed in the watchfulness which my text mentions, viz. our avoiding whatever either in the way of amusement, or incumbrance, may make us unready for the coming of our Lord; and the exercising ourselves to whatever may forward our preparedness to meet him.

In the watchfulness which my text mentions, here is supposed,

(1.) Our avoiding whatever either as an amusement or incumbrance may make us less ready for our Lord's coming. Considering our present circumstances and situation, as spirits in flesh, surrounded with so great a variety of objects, which by the senses gain admittance to the heart, it be

comes us to fear always. Without this guard upon ourselves, it will be next to impossible not to run into such an intimacy with this world, as will prejudice our correspondence with a better; and to get into that way of living, which will hazard our dying in peace. He who made this world, and perfectly knows the power of things present to ensnare corrupt nature, has often cautioned us to be upon our watch, if we would not be overcome by evil. This restraint upon us, flows from the infiniteness of wisdom and goodness there is in God, and is by no means an act of absolute sovereignty.

I shall instance in two particulars, whence good men are in danger of being unready for Christ's coming; against both which they should exercise themselves to this watchfulness. The

1. Launching out into a sort of boundless pursuit of the world. There is a great deal of danger from unblessed prosperity. A man of vast discernment, among other remarks he had made upon the ordinary course of things, observes to have seen riches given to the owners of them to their hurt. I said, unblessed or unsanctified prosperity, for neither love nor hatred is to be known by these things under the sun; Eccl. ix. 1. When riches increase, men are apt to set their hearts upon them; to pull hard, when they find that the world is coming; and spread all their sails, while the wind is favourable. So true is it, that they who love silver, are not satisfied with silver; or he that loveth abundance, with increase: Eccl. v. 10. How many