to redeem, the Holy Spirit to comfort, heaven for habitation, saints and angels for company, and all this to get and hold communion with sin and this world, and a few base wretches like themselves?  And shall not we labor as hard, run as fast, seek as diligently, nay, a hundred times more diligently, for the company of these glorious eternal friends, though with the loss of such as these, nay, with the loss of a thousand times better than these poor, low, base, contemptible things?  Shall it be said at the last day, that wicked men made more haste to hell than you did make to heaven; that they spent more hours, days, and that early and late, for hell, than you spent for that which is ten thousand thousand of thousand times better?  O let it not be so, but run with all might and main.

Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is the loss thereof so unspeakably great?  Then this commends those for the wise ones that above all business concern themselves with the salvation of their souls; those that make all other matters but things by the by, and the salvation of their soul the one thing needful.

Let me then encourage those that are of this mind to be strong and hold on their way.  Soul, thou hast chosen right; I will say of thy choice, as David said of Goliath’s sword, “There is none like that, give it me.”

But who told thee that thy soul was such an excellent thing as by thy practice thou declarest thou believest it to be?  What, set more by thy soul than by all the world?  What, cast a world behind thy back for the welfare of a soul!  Is not this to play the fool in the account of sinners, while angels wonder at and rejoice for thy wisdom?

What a thing is this, that thy soul and its welfare should be more in thy esteem than all these glories wherewith the eyes of the world are dazzled!  Surely, thou hast looked upon the sun, and that makes gold look like a clod of clay in thine eyesight.

But who put the thoughts of the excellencies of the things that are eternal—­I say, who put the thoughts of the excellency of those things into thy mind in this wanton age, in an age wherein the thoughts of eternal life and the salvation of the soul are with too many like the Morocco ambassador [Footnote:  Evelyn, who lived in the times of Charles I., Cromwell.  Charles II., and William, refers in his “Diary” to this ambassador, named Hamet.  When presented to the king, he and his retinue were “clad in the Moorish habite, cassocks of colored cloth or silk, with buttons and loopes; over this an ALHAGA or white woolen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and body; a shash or small turban; naked legg’d and armed, but with leather socks like the Turks; rich scymeters, and large calico-sleeved shirts.  The ambassador had a string of pearls oddly woven in the turban.  Their presents were lions and estridges (ostriches.) But the concourse and tumult of the people was intolerable, so as the officers could keep no order.”] and his men of strange faces, in strange habits, with strange gestures and behaviors, monsters to behold?