2.  Art thou unladen of the things of this world, as pride, pleasures, profits, lusts, vanities?  What! dost thou think to run fast enough, with the world, thy sins, and lusts, in thy heart?  I tell thee, soul, they that have laid all aside, every weight, every sin, and are got into the nimblest posture, they find work enough to run; so to run as to hold out.

To run through all that opposition, all the jostles, all the rubs, over all the stumbling blocks, over all the snares, from all the entanglements that the devil, sin, the world, and their own hearts, lay before them; I tell thee, if thou art going heavenward, thou wilt find it no small or easy matter.  Art thou therefore discharged and unladen of these things?  Never talk of going to heaven if thou art not.  It is to be feared thou wilt be found among the many that “will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”

THE SECOND USE.—­If so, then in the next place, What will become of them that are grown weary before they are got half way thither?  Why, man, it is he that holdeth out to the end that must be saved; it is he that overcometh that shall inherit all things; it is not every one that begins.  Agrippa gave a fair step for a sudden:  he steps almost into the body of Christ in less than half an hour.  “Thou,” saith he to Paul, “hast almost persuaded me to be a Christian.”  Ah! but it was but almost; and so he had as good have been never a whit; he stept fair indeed, but yet he stopt short; he was hot while he was at it, but he was quickly out of wind.  O this but “almost!” I tell you this but “almost,” lost him his soul.

Methinks I have seen sometimes how these poor wretches that get but almost to heaven, how fearfully their “almost,” and their “but almost,” will torment them in hell; when they shall cry out in bitterness of their souls, saying, ’Almost a Christian!  I was almost got into the kingdom, almost out of the hands of the devil, almost out of my sins, almost from under the curse of God; almost, and that was all; almost, but not altogether.  Oh! that I should be almost to heaven, and should not go quite through!’ Friend, it is a sad thing to sit down before we are in heaven, and to grow weary before we come to the place of rest; and if it should be thy case, I am sure thou dost not so run as to obtain.  But again,

THE THIRD USE.—­In the next place, What then will become of them that some time since were running post-haste to heaven, (insomuch that they seemed to outstrip many,) but now are running as fast back again?  Do you think those ever come thither?  What! to run back again, back again to sin, to the world, to the devil, back again to the lusts of the flesh?  Oh!  “It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it, to turn” (to turn back again) “from the holy commandment.”  Those men shall not only be damned for sin, but for professing to all the world that sin is better than