and yet he seeks for pleasures, riches, profits; he loveth vain company, and he is so and so, and professeth that he is going for heaven; yea, and he saith also he doth not fear but he shall have entertainment; let us therefore keep pace with him, we shall fare no worse than he!’ O how fearful a thing will it be, if thou shalt be instrumental to the ruin of others by thy halting in the way of righteousness!  Look to it, thou wilt have strength little enough to appear before God, to give an account of the loss of thy own soul; thou needest not to have to give an account for others, why thou didst stop them from entering in.  How wilt thou answer that saying, ’You would not enter in yourselves, and them that would, you hindered?’ For that saying will be eminently fulfilled on them that through their own idleness do keep themselves out of heaven, and by giving others the same example, hinder them also.

THE NINTH USE.—­Therefore, now to speak a word to both of you, and so I shall conclude.

1.  I beseech you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that none of you do run so lazily in the way to heaven as to hinder either yourselves or others.  I know that even he who runs laziest, if he should see a man running for a temporal life, who should so much neglect his own well-being in this world, as to venture, when he is running for his life, to pick up, here and there, a lock of wool that hangeth by the wayside, or to step, now and then, aside out of the way to gather up a straw or two, or any rotten stick; I say, if he should do this when he is running for his life, thou wouldst condemn him.  And dost thou not condemn thyself that dost the very same in effect? nay worse; that loiterest in thy race, notwithstanding thy soul, heaven, glory, and all is at stake?  Have a care, have a care, poor wretched sinner; have a care!

2.  If yet there shall be any that, notwithstanding this advice, will still be flagging and loitering in the way to the kingdom of glory, be thou so wise as not to take example by them.  Learn of no man farther than he followeth Christ.  But look unto Jesus, who is not only the author and finisher of faith, but who did, for the joy that was set before him, endure the cross, despise the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God.  I say, look to no man to learn of him, any farther than he followeth Christ.  “Be ye followers of me,” saith Paul, “even as I am of Christ.”  Though he was an eminent man, yet his exhortation was, that none should follow him any farther than he followed Christ.

PROVOCATION.—­Now that you may be provoked in run with the foremost, take notice of this.  When Lot and his wife were running from cursed Sodom to the mountains, to save their lives, it is said, that his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.  And yet you see that neither her practice, nor the judgment of God that fell upon her for the same, would cause Lot to look behind him.  I have sometimes wondered at Lot