commended, is, the days of our youth: And the reaJons that commend that feafon for this duty are principally thefe:

1. Because this is the most accepted time. God Almighty was pleafed under the old law to intimate this, in (the) refervation to himself of the first fruits and the first born, and furely the firft fruits of our lives, when dedicated to his remembrance, are best accepted to him.

2. Because this feafon is commonly our turning feafon to good or evil. And if in youth we forget our Creator, it is a very great difficulty to refume our duty: commonly it requires either very extraordinary grace, or very ftrong affliction to reclaim a man to his duty, whose youth hath been feasoned with ill principles, and the forgetfulness of God.

3. Because the time of youth is most obnoxious to forget God; there is great inadvertency and inconfideratenefs, incogitancy, unftablenefs, vanity, love of pleafures, eafinefs to be corrupted, in youth; and therefore neceffary in this feafon to lodge the remembrance of our Creator in our youth, to be an antidote against thefe defects, to establish and fix the entrance of our lives with this great prefervative, the remembrance of our Creator.

4. When Almighty God lays hold of our youth by a timely remembrance of himself, and thereby takes the first poffeffion of our fouls, commonly it keeps its ground, and feasons the whole course of our enfuing lives; it prevents and anticipates the devil and the world. It is true it may poffibly be, that natural corruption and worldly temptations may fufpend the actings of this principle, but it is rarely extinguished: It is like that abiding feed remaining in him, fpoken of by John 1, which will recover him again.

5. The last reafon is because there are evil days that will certainly come, which will render this work of re

1 1 John iii. 9..

membring

membring our Creator difficult to be first begun; and therefore it is the greatest prudence imaginable to lay in this stock before they come, for it will certainly ftand us in great ftead when they come. It is the greatest imprudence in the world to defer that business which is neceffary to be done, unto fuch a time wherein it is very difficult to be done: And it is the greatest prudence in the world to do that work which must be done in fuch a feafon wherein it may be easily and fafely done. He that lays in his store of remembrance of his Creator before the evil day come, will find it of the greatest use and fervice to him in that evil day.

Now thofe evil days are many, and all of them befall fome, but fome of them will certainly befall all mankind.

1. An evil day of public or private Calamities. He that beforehand hath laid in this ftock of remembring his Creator, will be easily able to bear any calamity when it comes; but a man that hath not done this beforehand, will find it a very unfeafonable time to begin to fet about it, when fear, and anguifh, and perplexity, and storms, and confufion are round about him, and take up all his thoughts.

2. The evil day of Sickness is an unseasonable time, or at least a very difficult time to begin fuch a business. When fickness, and pain, and diforder, and uneafiness, fhall render a man impatient and full of trouble, and his thoughts full of diforder, and difcompofure, and waywardness, then it will be found a difficult business to begin the remembrance of our Creator. It is true, no time is utterly unacceptable of God for this work, but furely it is beft to begin before this evil day come, for then it will be a comfort, and mitigate the pains and difcompofure of fickness, when a man can thus reflect upon his life paft, as Hezekiah did in his fickness; Remember, O Lord, that I have not failed to remember my Creator in the days of my health.

3. The evil day of Old and Infirm Age, which is a disease

difeafe and burden of itself, and yet it is ever accompa`nied with our fickneffes,pains and diseases, and a natural frowardnefs, and morofity, and discontentedness of mind, and therefore not so seasonable to begin the undertaking of this work as the flourishing youth. And indeed, a man cannot reasonably expect, that the great God, who invites the remembring our Creator in the days of our youth, and hath been ungratefully denied, fhould accept the dregs of our age for a facrifice, when we have neglected the thoughts of him in our ftrong and flourishing age. But, on the other fide, that man that hath spent the time of his youth and strength in the remembrance of his Creator, may with comfort and contentment in his old and feeble age, reflect upon his paft life with Hezekiah, Remember, O Lord, I pray Thee, that I have not failed to remember Thee in the days of my youth and ftrength, and I pray Thee accept of the endeavours of my old decayed C age, to preserve that remembrance of Thee which I fo early began, and have conftantly continued, and pardon the defects that the natural decays of my 'ftrength and age have occafioned in that duty.'

4. The evil day of Death. When my foul fits hovering upon my lips and is ready to take it's flight, when all the world cannot give my life any certain truce for a day, or for an hour, and I am under the cold embraces of death, then to begin to remember my Creator is a difficult and unfeasonable time: but when I have begun that bufinefs early, and held on the remembrance of my Creator, it will be a cordial even against death itself, and will carry my foul into the prefence of that God, which I have thus remembered in and from the days of my youth with triumph and rejoicing.

Briefly therefore:

1. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; because thou knoweft not whether thou fhalt have any other feafon to remember him: death may

overtake

overtake thee, and lay thee in the land of forgetfulnefs: Thy fpring may be thy autumn, and thy early bud may be the only fruit that mortality may afford

thee.

2. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; because it is a time of invitation: neglect not this feafon, because thou knowest not whether ever thou shalt be again invited to it.

3. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, that thy Creator may remember thee in the days of thy fickness and old age, and in the evil day.

4. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, left thy Creator neglect thee in the evil day. Neglected favours, efpecially from thy God,may justly provoke him never to lend thee more, Because I called, and ye refused, I alfo will laugh at your calamity, and 'mock when your fear cometh ".

5. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, because it will heal the evil of evil days; when they come, it will turn those days that are in themselves evil, to become days of eafe and comfort; it will heal the evil of the day of affliction, of sickness, of old age, and of death itself; and make it a paffage into a better, a more abiding life.

'Prov. i. 24, 26.

OF

OF THE

UNCLEANNESS OF THE HEART,

AND HOW IT IS CLEANSED:

PSAL. 51. 10.

COR MUNDUM CREA IN ME DEUS 1.

3.

THIS prayer imports or leads us into the confideration of these things: 1. What the condition of every man's heart is by nature: it is a foul and unclean heart. 2. Wherein confifts this uncleanness of the heart. What is the ground or cause of this uncleanness of the heart. 4. Whence it is that the condition of the heart is changed: it is an act of divine omnipotence. 5. What is the condition of a heart thus cleanfed, or wherein the cleannefs of the heart confifts.

I. If the heart must be created anew before it can be a clean heart, certainly, before it is thus new formed, it is an impure and unclean heart. And this that is here implied, is frequently in the Scriptures directly affirmed: The imagination of the thoughts of the ' heart of man is only evil continually 2: The heart is * deceitful above all things, and defperately wicked, 'who can know it 3?' Out of the heart proceed ' evil thoughts, adulteries &c4. And indeed all the evils that are in the world, are but evidences of the impurity of the heart, that unclean fountain and original of

them.

II. Concerning the second; wherein the uncleannefs of the heart confifts. The heart is indeed the crafts, or collection of all the powers of the foul in the full 1 Make me a clean heart, O God. . Gen. vi. 5. ' Jer. xvii. 9.

Mark vii. 21.