cast away precious hours on them, in using them needlessly? Recreations are your physic, or your sauce; and therefore must not become your food, nor made a meal of. They are only as whetting to the mower, which must never be used but when there is need; to spend half a day in needless whetting, deserves no wages. O did you know but what is your work, and time, and what is before you, you would be better husbands; and then you might so contrive your business, as to lose no time in recreations. For either your calling puts you on the labour of the mind, as students, or of the body, as labouring men. If study be your calling, you need no exercise of recreation but for your bodies, for variety of studies is the best or sufficient for the mind: and two hours' walking is bodily recreation enough in a day, for almost any student that is in a capacity to labour: and you be labouring men, or your calling lie in bodily motion, then you need no recreations for your bodies besides your callings, but only for your mind: and if you love God and his word, what better recreation for your minds can you devise, than thinking of the love of God in Christ, and meditating on the law of God (Psal. i. 2.), and calling upon him, and rejoicing in his praises, and the communion of his saints? Is not a day in his courts, better than a thousand any where else? The Spirit of God by David said so, Psal. lxxxiv. 10. But alas, it is this unmortified flesh, and tyranizing sensuality that blindeth you, that you cannot see the truth or else all this would be as plain to you as the high way.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

Vain Company to be Denied.

7. ANOTHER sensual vice to be denied, is, a love to vain, ungodly company. This is a sin that I think none but utterly graceless men are much carried away with. For the godly are all taught of God to love one another (1 Thess.iv. 9.), and to delight in the saints as the most excellent on earth (Psal. xvi. 2, 3.), and to take pleasure in their communion: and to look on the ungodly with a differencing belief, as foreseeing their everlasting misery, if they return

not: so that it is the ungodly that I have now to speak to. Some fall in love with the company of good fellows, as they call them and some love the company of harlots, and some of gamesters; and most of merry, pleasant companions, and men that are of their own disposition: and the love of such company, enticeth them to the frequent committing of the sin. They would not go to gaming but for company; they would not go to the alehouse but for company; and when they are there, perhaps they will swear, and drink, and mock at godliness for company. But are you willing also to go to hell for company? Is the company of those sinners, better than the company of God, and his favour? Were it not better to be that while with him in prayer, or about his work? If you love a tippling fellow better than God, speak out, and say so plainly, and never dissemble any more, nor say that you you love God above all, or that you are Christians. Have you more delight in the company of them that would entice to sin, than in the company of the godly that would draw you from it? This is a most certain mark, that yet you are the children of the devil, and in a state of damnation. It is not possible for a sanctified child of God to do so. See the description of the man that shall be saved, in Psal. xv. 4. "In his eyes a vile person is contemned, but he honoureth them that fear the Lord." Birds of a feather will flock together. The company which you love, shews what courses you love, and what you are. You delight in the company of those that Christ will judge as his enemies; and how then will he judge of you? You delight most in the company of those notorious fools, that know not the plainest and most needful things in all the world; that know not that God is better than the world, and holiness than sin; and know not the way of their own salvation. If you are content to have the company of the ungodly for ever, you may take it here. But if you would not dwell in hell with them, do not go on in sin with them. O when you shall see those very men arrested by death, and haled at the bar of God, and cast into damnation, then you will have no mind of their company! Then, O that you could but say, that you were none of them! Like a man that is enticed by thieves to join with them; but when the hue and cry overtakes them, and they are apprehended, how glad would he be then to be from among them! I tell you sinners, if grace recover

you, you shall wish in the sorrow of your hearts, that you had never seen the faces of those men that enticed you to evil; but if grace do not recover you, you shall wish ten thousand times in hell that you had never seen their faces: but then your wishes will be in vain. In the name of God bethink yourselves, whether your companions can bear you out at last, and save you from the wrath of God, and warrant your salvation? Nay, whether they can save themselves; alas, you know they cannot: God saith, "If you live after the flesh, ye shall die" (Rom. viii. 13.); and if these men say (as the devil to Eve)" You shall not die," are they able, think you, to make it good? What! can they overcome the God of heaven? O sirs, away, as you love your souls, from such mad and miserable company as this.

CHAPTER XXV.

Pleasing Accommodations, Buildings, Gardens, Houses, &c.

8. ANOTHER sensual delight to be denied, is, pleasing accommodations, in buildings, rooms, walks, gardens, grounds, cattle, and such like. It is lawful to be thus accommodated, and lawful to desire and use such accommodations, with such cautions as I gave before about recreations, 1. If you do not with Ahab desire to be accommodated by that which is another man's, coveting your neighbour's possessions, or unlawfully procuring it. 2. If you be not at too much cost upon such things, expending that upon them that should be laid out upon greater and better things. 3. But especially, if you desire such accommodations for right ends, sincerely referring all to God's honour, and desiring them, not principally to please your own fancy, and carnal mind, but for the enabling you the better and more cheerfully to serve God. Nothing but God may be loved for itself. When the pleasing of the flesh and fancy is the utmost thing we look at in any of our desires, they are wicked and idolatrous. Our houses therefore must be fitted to necessary uses, and not to inordinate delights. Our gardens, orchards, walks, and such like, must be first suited to necessity, and then so much delight as is useful to us for the promoting of our holiness; but not to any useless tempting delight.

But worldlings and sensual persons will not be tied to these Christian rules. Alas, it is the farthest matter from their minds, to make heaven the end of all their earthly possessions and accommodations. They may hypocritically talk of God, and of serving him by their estates; but really it is the pleasing of a fleshly mind that is the thing which they intend. They have more delight in their houses, and gardens, and lands, and cattle, than in God and the hopes of life everlasting. They desire fair houses that they may be thought to be no mean persons in the world, and that they may please their humours that run after creatures for felicity and content. I would desire such men to consider these things.

1. All these are but the baits of satan to delight you and entangle your desires, and find you work in seeking after them, while you neglect far greater matters. Can you have while to look so much after superfluities and delights in the world, when you have necessaries yet to look after for your souls? Have you not greater things to mind than these, which these occasion you to neglect?

2. Do you really find that they conduce to your main end, even to make you more holy, or more serviceable to God? Nay, do not your own consciences tell you, that they hinder you, and cross those ends? And yet will you go against your experience?

3. If you are humble, conscionable Christians, you feel cause enough already to lament, that your love to God and delight in him, is no more; and yet are you preparing snares for your souls, to steal away that little remnant of your affections, which you seemed to reserve for God?

4. If you have any spark of grace in you, you know that the flesh and the world are your most dangerous enemies; and you know that the way that the world doth undo men, is by enticing them to over-value it and over-love it; and that those that love it most, are deepest in a state of condemnation; and the less men love it, the less they are hurt or endangered by it. And do you not know that you are liker to over-love a sumptuous house, with gardens, orchards, and such accommodations, than a mean habitation? Why should you be such enemies to your own salvation, as to make temptations for yourselves? Have you not temptations enough already? Do you deal with those you have

so well, and overcome them so easily and so constantly, as that you have reason to desire more? If Christ your general send you upon a hotter service, you may go on with courage, and expect his help; but if you will so glory in your own strength, as to run into the hotter battle, and call for more and stronger enemies, it is easy to conjecture, how you will come off. If you are Christians, know yourselves; you know that in the meanest state, you are too prone to over-love the world, and that under God's medicinal afflictions, you cannot be so weaned from it as you ought! Are you not daily constrained to groan and complain to God under the burden of too much love of the world, and too much delight in worldly things? If this be not your case, I see not how you can have any sincerity of saving grace. And if it be your case, will you be so sottish, and hypocritical, as to complain daily to God of your sin, and in the mean time to love and cherish it? to groan under your disease, and wilfully eat and drink that which you know doth increase it? What will you think of a man that will pray to God to save him from uncleanness, and yet will dwell no where but in a brothel-house? What do you better, that must needs have the world in the loveliest garb, and must needs have house, and grounds, and all things in that plight, as are fittest to entice the heart; and then will complain to God, that you over-love the world, and love him too little? To your shame you may speak it, when you do it so wilfully,

and cherish the sin which you thus complain of. If God call you into a state of fulness and temptations, watch the more narrowly over your affections, and your practices; and use no more of the creatures for yourself, if you have ten thousand pounds a-year, than if you had but a hundred; but do not seek and long for temptations: wish not for danger, unless you were better able to pass through it.

5. Remember when your fancies desire such things, not only that it is an enemy that desireth them, and to please your enemy is not safe for you; but also that it is the way that most have perished by, to have the world before them in too pleasing and lovely a condition. Remember Nebuchadnezzar's case (Dan. iv. 30.), that for glorying in his pompous buildings, was turned as a madman among the beasts. Remember the rich man's sad example; Luke xii. 20. and xvi. and think whether it be safe to imitate them.

If men must