a thousand times stronger for our souls? May we not better say, 'We must please God, and set our hearts on the life to come, and mind and seek the one thing needful,.whatever becomes of other things; for we cannot live else; we cannot be saved else.'

Necessity makes the traveller trudge from morning till night; and the carrier to follow his horses through fair and foul from year to year. It makes some dig into the bowels of the earth, in mines and coal-pits; and some to hale barges ; and some to cut through the terrible ocean, and venture their lives among the raging waves and storms; and some even to beg their bread in rags from door to door. And O what will not necessity do that can be done? And yet how many thousands trifle or do nothing for their souls, as if there were no necessity of being saved; or no necessity of being holy that we may be saved. When alas, all the necessity in the world is no necessity at all, in comparison of this. You must beg, or starve, or famish, if you do not work. you must burn in hell, if with fear and diligence you work not out your own salvation; (for all that it is God that worketh in you.) Phil. ii. 12. You must lie in prison if your debts be not paid. But you will be cast into outer darkness, if by the pardon of your sins, you be not discharged from your debt to God. You may become beggars if you be idle in your callings. But you will be the prisoners of hell, and shut out of all the happiness of the saints, if you labour not for the food that doth not perish, and strive not to enter in at the strait gate, and give not diligence to make your calling and election sure; John vi. 27. Matt. vii. 13. Luke

But

hunger and nakedBut you must suf

xiii. 24. 2 Pet. i. 10. You must suffer ness if you have not food and raiment. fer everlastingly the wrath of God, if you have not the one thing necessary. You will be the scorn and laughingstock of men, if you fall under their contempt, and lose your honour. But you will be the enemies of God, and hated by him, if you continue to contemn his grace.

O had you but seen the life to come, you would say, there is a necessity of attaining it! Had you been one hour in hell, you would think that there is a necessity of escaping it, and that there is no necessity to this.

What say you to all this? Is it not of truth and weight? Can you deny it? Or should you make light of it? None

but an infidel can deny it; and none but a deadhearted sinner can make light of it. Believe the word of God, and the truth of it will be past question with you. Consider but that you are men that have immortal souls, and the weight of it will appear inestimable to you; above contempt; above neglect. Believe it, sirs, you may as well see without light, and be supported without earth, or live without food, as be saved without holiness, or happy without the one thing necessary; Heb. xii. 14. John iii.3.5. Matt. xviii. 3. And when this is resolved of by God, and established as his standing law, and he hath told it you so oft and plainly, for any man now to say, 'I will yet hope for better; I hope to be saved on easier terms, without all this ado,' is no better than to set his face against the God of heaven, and instead of believing God, to believe the contradiction of his own ungodly heart; and to hope to be saved whether God will or not; and to give the lie to his Creator, under the pretence of trust and hope. It is indeed to hope for impossibilities. To be saved without holiness, is to see without eyes, and to live without life. And who is so foolish as to hope for this? Few of you are so unreasonable as to hope for a crop at harvest, without ploughing or sowing; or for a house without building; or for strength without eating and drinking; or to sleep and play, when you have nothing to maintain your families, and say, You hope that God will maintain both you and them. And yet this were a far wiser kind of hope, than to hope to be saved without the one thing necessary to salvation; and without a heart that is set upon it, and a life that is employed for it. It is the Holy Ghost that calleth you to answer the question, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" If you know how, then enter the lists with God, and dispute the cause with him. How will you escape, if you be neglecters of the only way that he hath provided for your escape? Is there any power or interest of men or angels that can procure your escape? How can that be done, that God hath resolved shall not be?

I beseech you now, beloved hearers, to remember this urgent motive of necessity, and use it when you are tempted to delay or trifle about the business of your salvation, as if it were some indifferent, needless thing. Without worldly riches you may be rich in faith: without worldly honours, you may have the honour of being the sons of God; and

without worldly pleasures, or health, or life, you may have the favour of God and life eternal. But without the one thing needful, you have nothing that is durably or satisfactorily good, but are undone for ever. Without the things of the world, you live in want for a little while, and then you will be equal to the greatest princes. But without this one thing, you must live in endless woe and misery, and be far worse than the basest prisoner in the dungeon, or than the toads and vermin that lie in the most unclean holes or sinks of the earth. And yet dare you delay another day before you make so necessary a change? You have hearts of stone, if your own necessity thus urged upon your consideration will not awake you. If your hearts were not dead within you, while you hear these things, one would think such a necessity should make you feel, and resolve upon a speedy change, and make you stir in the diligent performance. Can you go on in security, in negligence, and worldliness, when you hear of your necessity, that you must change, or you are lost for ever? O stupid souls, that will not be moved with necessity of everlasting consequence! O what hath God, or Christ, or heaven, or holiness done against these men, that will rather lie in hell for ever, than they will live in the love and service of this God, and in the practice of holiness, and in the hopes of heaven! How meet are they for hell, that will venture upon it deliberately and upon choice, to escape the trouble of living in the holy love, delight, and service of the ever blessed God! that is, to escape the trouble of heaven. Is it so great a sin to shut up the bowels of compassion against our brother in his need? And it is not more unnatural to deny compassion to yourselves in your own necessity, and in the greatest necessity? O poor sinners, remember your necessities! Your own, your great, your absolute necessities. When you hear men that gather alms cry, Remember the poor,' doth it make thee think, What a poor, necessitous soul have I to remember? As Paul saith of preaching to others, I may say much more to you, of minding and practising this great work of your salvation; "Necessity is laid upon you, and woe to you if you do it not;" 1 Cor. ix. 16. Woe to you that ever you were born, and that ever you were reasonable creatures, or rather, that ever you so abused your reason, if you neglect and miss of the one thing necessary.

I know you have other wants to be supplied, and other matters to look after in the world. But alas, how small are they! God will supply all your other wants, if you will first and faithfully look after this; Phil. iv. 19. Matt. vi. 33. 1 Pet. v. 7. Or if life and all go, you will find all in heaven. But if you miss of this one thing, nothing in the world can make supply, or do you good. And though now your feelings tell you not these things, alas how quickly will God make you feel, and teach you by that sensible way that you would needs be taught by!

Awake then, you sluggish, careless souls! Your house over your heads is on a flame! The hand of God is lifted up! If you love yourselves, prevent the stroke. Vengeance is at your backs. The wrath of God pursueth your sin ; and woe to you if he find it upon you when he overtaketh you: Away with it speedily. Up and be gone, return to God; make Christ and mercy your friend in time, if you love your' lives. The Judge is coming; for all that you have heard of it so long, still you believe it not. You shall shortly see the Majesty of his appearance, and the dreadful glory of his face, and yet do you not begin to look about you, and to make ready for such a day? Yea, before that day, your separated souls shall begin to reap as you have sowed here. Though now the partition that stands between you and the world to come, do keep unbelievers strange to the things that most concerneth them, yet death will quickly find a portal to let you in; and then sinners, you will find such doings there as you little thought of, or at least did sensibly regard on earth. Before your corpse can be wrapped up in your winding-sheets, you will see and feel that which will tell you to the quick, that one thing was necessary. If you do die without this one thing necessary, before your friends can have finished your funerals, your souls will have taken up their places among the devils in endless torment and despair; and all the wealth, and honour, and pleasure, that the world afforded you, will not ease you. This is sad, but it

is true, sirs, for God hath spoken it.

Up therefore, and bestir you for the life of your souls! Necessity will awake the sluggard. Necessity, we say, will break stone walls. The proudest will stoop when they perceive necessity. The most slothful will bestir them when

they feel necessity. The most careless will look about them and be industrious in necessity. Necessity is called the tyrant of the world, that can make men do any thing that is possible to be done. And yet cannot necessity make you cast away your sins, and take up a holy and heavenly life? Necessity will make men fare hard, and work hard, and travel hard; go bare, and suffer much; yea it will even cut off a leg or arm to save their lives. And yet can it not prevail with reasonable creatures, to cast away the poison of a fruitless, filthy, deceitful sin, and to be up and doing for their salvation! O poor souls! Is there, think you, a greater necessity of your sin than of your salvation? and of pleasing your flesh for a little time, than of pleasing the Lord, and escaping everlasting misery? I beseech you consider your own necessities.

2. Consider also, that it is but one thing which God hath made necessary for you. And I shewed you before, how that the means themselves, though they are many, have a certain unity in their harmony and connexion, and as they centre in the ultimate end, which is one. If God had sent you upon such a multitude of errands as the flesh and the world doth, and set you on such disagreeing, contrary works, then you had been excusable if you had neglected some of them. But he hath sent you but upon one errand; even to seek and make sure of everlasting life; and therefore if you neglect this one, you are inexcusable. If the world be divided into a thousand opinions, or go a thousand several ways, they may thank themselves, who are the authors of this confusion; but God is no cause of it, or friend to it. He hath made them but one work, and set them but one way to heaven, and given them one Master, Jesus Christ, to teach that way; and written but one law, even his holy Scripture, to be their sure and constant guide. And if men would stick to this one Master, and not make flesh and blood their master, or the multitude their master, or the rulers of the world, or the custom of their forefathers the master of their faith; and if they would stick to this one word of God, and not run after the traditions of men, they would not be in such a maze, nor of so many minds as now they are. But they do in their doctrines as they do in their practice. God hath marked them out but one way in the holy Scripture, which is the good and the sure way, the way that Peter and Paul,