Page:Great importance of a suitable preparation for death (1).pdf/19

( 19 ) tomorrow ye may die, and be cut off in the flower of your age. Think not that there be many who can ſell time, for I ſay, ye shall never get time ſold unto you— Alas! I fear that the moſt part of perſons that die now, death findeth them at unawares; for indeed the perſons that die among us, when we come to visit them, we may give you a ſad account of them. We think they are comprehended under theſe four ſorts.

1 When we go to visit ſome perſons on their death-beds, they are like into Nabal their heart is dying and sinking (like unto a ſtone) within them; they are no more affected with death, than if it were a fancy. Alas! for the great ſtupidity that hath overtaken many. Therefore, I intreat you delay not your repentance till death, leſt the Lord take away your wit, ſo that you cannot repent for your ſenſeleſsneſs, and ſtupid frame of ſpirit.

2. A ſecond ſort we find in a preſumptuous frame ſaying, They have had a good hope all their days, and they will not quit it now; they will go down to their graves with their hope in their right hand; or, rather, they will “go down to the grave with a lie in their right hand:” They live in a preſumptuous frame, and they die in the ſame deluſion. For, when we tell them, by all probability they are going down to