Such was the practice of those times: but now the case is altered; people will be Christians, and have their worldly-mindedness too; but though God's kingdom suffer violence by such, yet shall they never enter: the life of Christ and his followers hath in all ages been another thing; and there is but one way, one guide, one rest; all of which are pure and holy. [78] Philo Judæus, of the worship of Egypt and Alexandria. Euseb. Pam. Eccl. Hist. 1. 2. c. 17. II. But if any, notwithstanding our many sober reasons, and numerous testimonies from Scripture, or the example or experience of religious, worldly, and profane living and dying men at home and abroad, of the greatest note, fame, and learning in the whole world, shall yet remain lovers and imitators of the folly and the vanity condemned: if the cries and groans, sighs and tears, and complaints, and mournful wishes of so many reputed great, nay, some sober men; "O that I had more time! O that I might live a year longer, I would live a stricter life! O that I were a poor Jean Urick! All is vanity in this world! O my poor soul! whither wilt thou go? O that I had the time spent in vain recreations! A serious life is above all:" and such like. If, I say, this by no means can prevail, but if yet they shall proceed to folly, and follow the vain world, what greater evidence can they give of their heady resolution, to go on impiously to despise God, to disobey his precepts, to deny Christ, to scorn, not to bear his cross, to forsake the examples of his servants, to give the lie to the dying serious sayings and consent of all ages; to harden themselves against the checks of conscience, to befool and sport away their precious time, and poor immortal souls to woe and misery? (Exod. xxxii. 6; Amos, vi. 3-6; Ephes. iv. 17, 24.) In short, it is plain to discover, you have neither reason to justify yourselves, nor yet enough of modesty to blush at your own folly; but as those that have lost the sense of one and the other, go on to eat and drink, and rise up to play. (Matt. xix. 16-22.) In vain, therefore, is it for you to pretend to fear the God of heaven, whose minds serve the god of the pleasure of this world: in vain is it to say, you believe in Christ, who receive not his self-denying doctrine: and to no better purpose will all you do avail. If he that had loved God and his neighbour, and kept the commandments from his youth, was excluded from being a disciple, because he sold not all, and followed Jesus; with what confidence can you call yourselves Christians, who have neither kept the commandments, nor yet forsaken anything to be so? And if it was a bar betwixt him and the eternal life he sought, that, notwithstanding all his other virtues, love to money and his external possessions could not be parted with, what shall be your end, who cannot deny yourselves many less things, but are daily multiplying your inventions to please your fleshly appetites? Certainly, much more impossible is it to