5.  Whose salvation is it that you make light of?  Is it not your own?  Are you no more near or dear to yourselves than to make light of your own happiness or misery?  Why, sirs, do you not care whether you be saved or damned?  Is self-love lost? are you turned your own enemies?  As he that slighteth his meat doth slight his life, so if you slight Christ, whatsoever you may think, you will find it was your own salvation that you slighted.  Hear what He saith, “All they that hate me love death.”

6.  Your sin is greater, in that you profess to believe the gospel which you make so light of.  For a profest infidel to do it that believes not that ever Christ died, or rose again, or doth not believe that there is a heaven or hell, this were no such marvel—­but for you, that make it your creed, and your very religion, and call yourselves Christians, and have been baptized into this faith, and seemed to stand to it, this is the wonder, and hath no excuse.  What! believe that you shall live in endless joy or torment, and yet make no more of it to escape torment, and obtain that joy!  What! believe that God will shortly judge you, and yet make no preparation for it!  Either say plainly, I am no Christian, I do not believe these wonderful things, I will believe nothing but what I see, or else let your hearts be affected with your belief, and live as you say you do believe.  What do you think when you repeat the creed, and mention Christ’s judgment and everlasting life?

7.  What are these things you set so much by as to prefer them before Christ and the saving of your soul?  Have you found a better friend, a greater and a surer happiness than this?  Good Lord! what dung is it that men make so much of, while they set so light by everlasting glory?  What toys are they that are daily taken up with, while matters of life and death are neglected?  Why, sirs, if you had every one a kingdom in your hopes, what were it in comparison of the everlasting kingdom?  I can not but look upon all the glory and dignity of this world, lands and lordships, crowns and kingdoms, even as on some brain-sick, beggarly fellow, that borroweth fine clothes, and plays the part of a king or a lord for an hour on a stage, and then comes down, and the sport is ended, and they are beggars again.  Were it not for God’s interest in the authority of magistrates, or for the service they might do Him, I should judge no better of them.  For, as to their own glory, it is but a smoke:  what matter is it whether you live poor or rich, unless it were a greater matter to die rich than it is?  You know well enough that death levels all.  What matter is it at judgment, whether you be to answer for the life of a rich man or a poor man?  Is Dives, then, any better than Lazarus?  Oh, that men knew what poor, deceiving shadow they grasp at while they let go the everlasting substance!  The strongest, and richest, and most voluptuous sinners do but lay in fuel for their sorrows, while they think they are