nts, to be like
pagans? Christ uses such an argument with his disciples to dissuade them
from carnal carefulness, Matt. vi. 32. Sobriety is a work of the day
becoming a child of light, as Paul observes, 1 Thess. v. 4-9, importing as
much as if it were a shame for the Christian to be found much in love with
the world, as it is for a man to be drunk at nine in the morning and
staggering in the streets. There ought to be as great a difference between
you and the world, as there is between day and night, light and darkness.
Since the true light hath shined, to discover a more excellent happiness
than the world can give, and since it hath concluded all under vanity, ye
are not answerable to your holy calling to have it in any higher
estimation. Consider also, (4) That the world is not your portion. Your
life consists not in what you enjoy, your inheritance is above, reserved
in the heavens for you. Therefore be sober. If ye believed this, that one
day ye shall put on white robes, and be clothed with immortality, would ye
so pursue after the world? It is the world's portion, and let them who
know no better seek it as their god, and love it as their inheritance; but
fie upon believers, that have a hope laid up in heaven, and fixed as an
anchor within the vail. Should ye cause your portion to be evil spoken of,
by your groping so much after this present world? If ye walked right ye
should torment the world, and oblige them to be convinced that ye seek a
city to come, and that ye despise all their enjoyments. But, (5)
Insobriety becomes not a reasonable soul and is very unbeseeming a
Christian, even so is it to every man. Are ye not better, says Christ,
than many sparrows? Is not the life more than meat? Matt. vi. 25, Luke
xii. 23, 24. So we may say, Is not the soul better than the perishing
creature? O it is the disgrace and debasement of an immortal spirit to be
put under the feet of a piece of clay, to be subjected to vanity, and to
the poor perishing things of the world. If a man but knew himself, and his
natural prerogative above the creatures, let be(510) his Christian
privileges, he would despise the world, and think all that is in it not a
satisfying portion for his spirit. He would count it a great disparagement
to lodge upon this side of infiniteness and divine fulness. Would ye not
think it a base thing to see a king's son sitting down among beggars, and
puddling in the filth of the city? God made man to have lordship an