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against the master, radical sins of unbelief, hypocrisy, selfishness, pride, sensuality, or fleshpleasing, and the inordinate love of earthly things. Take heed, lest under pretence of diligence in your calling, you be drawn to earthly-mindedness, and excessive cares or covetous designs for rising in the world. If you are to trade or deal with others, take heed of selfishness, which desireth to draw or save from others, as much as you can for yourselves and your own advantage; take heed of all that savoureth of injustice or uncharitableness in all your dealings with others. If you converse with vain-talkers, be still provided against the temptation of vanity of talk. If you converse with angry persons, be still fortified against their provocations. If you converse with wanton persons, or such as are tempting those of the other sex, maintain that modesty and necessary distance and cleanness of speech which the laws of chastity require. you have servants that are still faulty, be so provided against the temptation, that their faults may not make you faulty, and you may do nothing that is unseemly or unjust, but only that which tendeth to their amendment. If you are poor, be still provided against the temptations of poverty, that it bring not upon you an evil far greater than itself. If you are rich, be most diligent in fortifying your hearts against those more dangerous temptations of riches, which very few escape. If you converse with flatterers or those that much admire you, be fortified against swelling pride. If you converse with those that despise and injure you, be fortified against impatient, revengeful pride. These works at first will be very difficult, while sin is in any strength; but when you have got an habitual apprehension of the poisonous danger of every one of these sins, and of the tendency of all temptations, your hearts will readily and easily avoid them, without much tiring, thoughtfulness, and care; even as a man will pass by a house infected with the plague, or go out of the way if he meet a cart or any thing that would hurt him.

Direct. x. When you are alone in your labours, improve the time in practical, fruitful (not speculative and barren) meditations: especially in heart-work and heavenwork' let your chiefest meditations be on the infinite goodness and perfections of God, and the life of glory, which in

the love and praise of him, you must live for ever: and next let Christ and the mysteries of grace in man's redemption, be the matter of your thoughts and next that your own hearts and lives, and the rest before expressed, Chap. xvi. Direct. 6. If you are able to manage meditations methodically it will be best; but if you cannot do that, without so much striving as will confound you, and distract you, and east you into melancholy, it is better let your meditations be more short and easy, like ejaculatory prayers; but let them usually be operative to do some good upon your hearts.

Direct. x1. If you labour in company with others, be provided with matter, skill, resolution, and zeal, to improve the time in profitable conference, and to avoid diversions,' as is directed, Chap. xvi.

Direct. XII. Whatever you are doing, in company or alone, let the day be spent in the inward excitation and exercise of the graces of the soul, as well as in external bodily duties.' And to that end know, that there is no external duty, but must have some internal grace to animate it, or else it is but an image or carcase, and unacceptable to God. When you are praying and reading, there are the graces of faith, desire, love, repentance, &c. to be exercised there: when you are alone, meditation may help to actuate any grace as you find most needful: when you are conferring with others, you must exercise love to them, and love to that truth about which you do confer, and other graces as the subject shall require: when you are provoked or under suffering, you have patience to exercise. But especially it must be your principal daily business, by the exercise of faith, to keep your hearts warm in the love of God and your dear Redeemer, and in the hopes and delightful thoughts of heaven. As the means are various and admit of deliberation and choice, because they are to be used but as means, and not all at once, but sometimes one and sometimes another, when the end is still the same and past deliberation or choice; so all those graces which are but means must be used thus variously, and with deliberation and choice; when the love of God and of eternal life must be the constant tenor and constitution of the mind, as being the final grace, which consisteth with the exercise of every other mediate grace. Never take up with lip-labour or bodily exercise

alone, nor barren thoughts, unless your hearts be also employed in a course of duty, and holy breathings after God, or motion towards him, or in the sincere internal part of the duty which you perform to men: Justice and Love are graces which you must still exercise towards all that you have to deal with in the world. Love is called the fulfilling of the law, because the Love of God and man is the soul of every outward duty, and a cause that will bring forth these as its effects.

Direct. XIII. Keep up a high esteem of time; and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold or silver: and if vain recreations, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep, be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time, accordingly heighten your watchfulness and firm resolutions against them.' Be not more careful to escape thieves and robbers, than to escape that person or action, or course of life, that would rob you of any of your time. And for the redeeming of time, especially see, not only that you be never idle, but also that you be doing the greatest good that you can do, and prefer not a less before a greater.

Direct. XIV. Eat and drink with temperance, and thankfulness: for health and not for unprofitable pleasure.' For quantity, most carefully avoid excess; for many exceed, for one that taketh too little. Never please your appetite in meat or drink, when it tendeth to the detriment of your health. "It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink. Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of heavy hearts d." "Woe to thee, O land when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness." Then must poorer men also take heed of intemperance and excess. Let your diet incline rather to the coarser than the finer sort, and to the cheaper than the costly sort, and to sparing abstinence than to fulness. I would advise rich men especially, to write in great letters on the walls of their dining rooms or parlours these two sentences: BEHOLD THIS

Eccles. x. 16, 17.

WAS THE INIQUITY OF SODOM; PRIDE, FULNESS OF BREAD, AND ABUNDANCE OF IDLENESS WAS IN HER, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy f." "There was a certain rich man which was CLOTHED IN PURPLE AND SILK AND FARED SUMPTUOUSLY every day. Son remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things §." Paul wept when he mentioned them, "whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things, being enemies to the cross O live not after the flesh, lest ye die i."

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Direct. xv. If any temptation prevail against you, and you fall into any sins besides common infirmities, presently lament it, and confess not only to God, but to men, when confession conduceth more to good than harm; and rise by a true and thorough repentance, immediately without delay.' Spare not the flesh, and daub not over the breach, and do not by excuses palliate the sore, but speedily rise whatever it cost for it will certainly cost you more to go on or to remain impenitent. And for your ordinary infirmities, make not too light of them, but confess them, and daily strive against them; and examine what strength you get against them, and do not aggravate them by impenitence and contempt.

Direct. xvI. Every day look to the special duties of your several relations:' whether you are husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, pastors, people, magistrates, subjects, remember that every relation hath its special duty, and its advantage for the doing of some good; and that God requireth your faithfulness in these, as well as in any other duty. And that in these a man's sincerity or hypocrisy is usually more tried, than in any other parts of our lives.

Direct. XVII. In the evening return to the worshipping of God, in the family and in secret as was directed for the morning.' And do all with seriousness as in the sight of God, and in the sense of your necessities; and make it your

delight to receive instructions from the holy Scripture, and praise God, and call upon his name through Christ.

Direct. xvIII. If you have any extraordinary, impediments one day to hinder you in your duty to God and man, make it up by diligence the next; and if you have any extraordinary helps, make use of them, and let them not overslip you.' As, if it be a lecture-day, or a funeral sermon, or you have opportunity of converse with men of extraordinary worth; or if it be a day of humiliation or thanksgiving; it it may be expected that you get a double measure of strength by such extraordinary helps.

Direct. XIX. Before you betake yourselves to sleep, it is ordinarily a safe and needful course, to take a review of the actions and mercies of the past day; that you may be specially thankful for all special mercies, and humbled for your sins, and may renew your repentance and resolutions for obedience, and may examine yourselves, whether your souls grow better or worse, and whether sin go down, and grace increase, and whether you are any better prepared for sufferings and death.' But yet waste not too much time in the ordinary accounts of your life, as those that neglect their duty while they are examining themselves how they perform it, and perplexing themselves with the long perusal of their ordinary infirmities. But by a general (yet sincere) repentance, bewail your unavoidable daily failings, and have recourse to Christ for a daily pardon and renewed grace; and in case of extraordinary sins or mercies, be sure to be extraordinarily humbled or thankful. Some think it best to keep a daily catalogue or diurnal of their sins and mercies. If you do so, be not too particular in the enumeration of those that are the matter of every day's return; for it will be but a temptation to waste your time, and neglect greater duty, and to make you grow customary and senseless of such sins and mercies, when the same come to be recited over and over from day to day. But let the common mercies be more generally recorded, and the common sins generally confessed (yet neither of them therefore slighted): and let the extraordinary mercies, and greater sins, have a more particular observation. And yet remember, that sins and mercies, which it is not fit that others be acquainted with, are more safely committed to memory than to writing :