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ing hours to answer for, as too many ladies and other gallants have.

Direct. IV. If you are persons of quality you may employ a child or servant to read a chapter in the Bible, while you are dressing you, and eating your breakfast (if you eat any). Else you may employ that time in some fruitful meditation, or conference with those about you, as far as your necessary occasions do give leave.' As to think or speak of the mercy of a night's rest, and of your renewed time, and how many spent that night in hell, and how many in prison, and how many in a colder, harder lodging, and how many in grievous pain and sickness, weary of their beds and of their lives, and how many in distracting terrors of their minds; and how many souls that night were called from their bodies, to appear before the dreadful God: and think how fast days and nights roll on! and how speedily your last night and day will come! And observe what is wanting in the readiness of your soul, for such a time, and seek it presently without delay.

Direct. v. If more necessary duties call you not away, let secret prayer by yourself alone, or with your chamberfellow, or both, go before the common prayers of the family; and delay it not causelessly, but if it may be, let it be first, before any other work of the day.' Yet be not formal and superstitious to your hours, as if God had absolutely tied you to such a time: nor think it not your duty to pray once in secret, and once with your chamber-fellow, and once with the family every morning, when more necessary duties call you off. That hour is best for one, which is worst for another to most, private prayer is most seasonable as soon as they are up and clothed; to others some other hour may be more free and fit. And those persons that have not more necessary duties, may do well to pray at all the opportunities before-mentioned; but reading and meditation must be allowed their time also; and the labours of your callings must be painfully followed; and servants and poor people that are not at liberty, or that have a necessity of providing for their families, may not lawfully take so much time for prayer, as some others may; especially the aged and weak that cannot follow a calling, may take longer time. And ministers, that have many souls to look after, and public

work to do, must take heed of neglecting any of this, that they may be longer and oftener in private prayer. Always remember that when two duties are at once before you, and one must be omitted, that you prefer that which, all things considered, is the greatest; and understand what maketh a duty greatest. Usually that is greatest which tendeth to the greatest good; yet sometimes that is greatest at that time, which cannot be done at another time, when others may. Praying, in itself considered, is better than ploughing, or marketting, or conference; and yet these may be greater than it in their proper seasons; because prayer may be done at another time, when these cannot.

Direct. VI. Let family worship be performed constantly and seasonably, twice a day, at that hour which is freest in regard of interruptions; not delaying it without just cause. But whenever it is performed, be sure it be reverently, seriously, and spiritually done.' If greater duty hinder not, begin with a brief invocation of God's name, and craving of his help and blessing through Christ; and then read some part of the holy Scripture in order; and either help the hearers to understand it and apply it, or if you are unable for that, then read some profitable book to them for such ends; and sing a psalm (if there be enough to do it fitly,) and earnestly pour out your souls in prayer. But if unavoidable occasions will not give way to all this, do what you can, especially in prayer, and do the rest another time; but pretend not necessity against any duty, when it is but unwillingness or negligence. The lively performance of family-duties, is a principal means to keep up the power and interest of godliness in the world; which all decays when these grow dead, and slight, and formal.

Direct. VII. Renew the actual intention and remembrance of your ultimate end, when you set yourselves to your day's work, or set upon any notable business in the world. Let HOLINESS TO THE LORD be written upon your hearts in all that you do.' Do no work which you cannot entitle God to, and truly say he set you about; and do nothing in the world for any other ultimate end, than to please, and glorify, and enjoy him. And remember that whatever you do, must be done as a means to these, and as by one that is that way going on to heaven. All All your la

bour must be as the labour of a traveller, which is all for his journey's end; and all your respect or affection to any place or thing in your way, must be in respect to your attainment of the end; as a traveller loveth a good way, a good horse, a good inn, a dry cloak, or good company; but nothing must be loved here as your end or home. Lift up your hearts to heaven and say, 'If this work and way did not tend thither directly or indirectly, it were no work or way for me.' Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

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Direct. VIII. Follow the labours of your calling painfully and diligently.' From hence will follow many commodities. 1. You will shew that you are not sluggish, and servants to your flesh, as those that cannot deny its ease; and you will further the mortification of all fleshly lusts and desires, which are fed by ease and idleness. 2. You will keep out idle thoughts from your mind, which swarm in the minds of idle persons. 3. You will escape the loss of precious time, which idle persons are daily guilty of. 4. You will be in a course of obedience to God, when the slothful are in a constant sin of omission. 5. You may have the more time to spare for holy exercises, if you follow your labour close when you are at it; when idle persons can have no time for prayer or reading, because they lose it by loitering at their work, and leave their business still behind-hand. 6. You may expect God's blessing for the comfortable provision for yourselves and families, and to have to give to them that need, when the slothful are in want themselves, and cast by their want into abundance of temptations, and have nothing to do good with. 7. And it will also tend to the health of your bodies, which will make them the fitter for the service of your souls. When slothfulness wasteth time, and health, and estate, and wit, and grace, and all a.

Direct. IX. Be throughly acquainted with your corruptions and temptations, and watch against them all the day; especially the most dangerous sort of your corruptions, and those temptations which your company or business will unavoidably lay before you. Be still watching and working

a Ephes. iv. 28. Prov. x. 4. xii. 24. 27. xviii. 9. xxi. 25. xxiv. 30.

xiii. 4. xxi. 5. xxii. 29.

b Antequam domo quis exeat, quid acturus sit, apud se pertractat. Rursus cum redierit, quid egerit, recogitet. Cleobulus in Diog. Laert. lib. i. sect. 92. p. 57.

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 temptątion 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. If 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. 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.

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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 cast 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

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