Oh, I say, regard, regard; for hell is hot, God’s hand is up, the law is resolved to discharge against thy soul.  The judgment-day is at hand; the graves are ready to fly open; the trumpet is near the sounding; the sentence will ere long be past, and then you and I cannot call time again.

Reckon with thy own heart every day before thou lie down to sleep, and cast up what thou hast received from God and done for him, and where thou hast also been wanting.  This will beget praise and humility, and put thee upon redeeming the day that is past; whereby thou wilt be able, through the continual supplies of grace, in some good measure to drive thy work before thee, and to shorten it as thy life doth shorten, and mayst comfortably live in the hope of bringing both ends sweetly together.

Watchfulness.

He that will keep water in a sieve, must use more than ordinary diligence.  Our heart is a leaky vessel; and therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

Constitution-sins.

They that name the name of Christ, let them depart from their constitution-sin, or if you will, the sin that their temper most inclines them to.  Every man is not alike inclined to the same sin, but some to one, and some to another.  Now, let the man that professes the name of Christ religiously consider with himself, “Unto what sin or vanity am I most inclined? is it pride? is it covetousness? is it fleshly lust?” and let him labor by all means to leave off and depart from that.  This is that which David called his own iniquity, and saith, “I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.”  Psa. 18:23.  Rightly are these two put together, for it is not possible that he should be an upright man that indulgeth or countenanceth his constitution-sin; but on the contrary, he that keeps himself from that will be upright as to all the rest; and the reason is, because if a man has grace to trample upon and mortify his darling, his bosom, his only sin, he will more easily and more heartily abhor and fly the rest.

And indeed, if a man will depart from iniquity, he must depart from his darling sin first; for as long as that is entertained, the other, at least those that are most suiting to that darling, will always be haunting of him.  There is a man that has such and such haunt his house and spend his substance, and would be rid of them, but cannot; but now, let him rid himself of that for the sake of which they haunt his house, and then he shall with ease be rid of them.  Thus it is with sin.  There is a man that is plagued with many sins, perhaps because he embraceth one; well, let him turn that one out of doors, and that is the way to be rid of the rest.  Keep thee from thy darling, thy bosom, thy constitution-sin.

Among the motives to prevail with thee to fall in with this exhortation, are,