Chapter V (3)

_Thief_ III. The next thief or time-waster is inordinate adorning of the body. The poor may thank God that they are free also from the temptations to this, and can quickly dress them and go about their business; but many ladies and gallants are so guilty of this vice, that I wonder conscience is so patient with them.[293] O poor neglected, undressed souls! O filthy consciences, never cleansed from your pollutions by the Spirit or blood of Christ! Have you not better use for precious hours, than to be washing, and pinning, and dressing, and curling, and spotting, and powdering, till ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, when honest labourers have done one half of their day's work? While you are in health, were not six o'clock in the morning a fitter hour for you to be dressed, that you might draw near to the most holy God in holy prayer, and read his word, and set your souls, and then your families, in order for the duties of the following day? I do not say that you may go no neater than poor labouring people, or that you may bestow no more time than they in dressing you: but I say, that for your souls, and in your callings, you are bound by God to be as diligent as they; and have no more time given you to lose than they, and that you should spend as little of it in neatifying you as you can, and be sensible that else the loss is your own: and that abundance of precious hours which your pride consumeth, will lie heavy one day upon your consciences; and then you shall confess, I say, you shall confess it with aching hearts, that the duties you owed to God and man, and the care of your souls, and of your families, should have been preferred before your appearing neat and spruce to men. If you have but a journey to go, you can rise earlier and be sooner dressed; but for the good of your souls, and the redeeming of your precious time, you cannot. Oh that God would but show you what greater work you have to do with those precious hours! and how it will cut your hearts to think of them at last! If you lay but hopelessly sick of a consumption, you would be cured it is like of this proud disease, and bestow less of your time in adorning the flesh, which is hasting to the grave and rottenness! And cannot you now see how time and life consume? and what cause you have, with all your care and diligence, to use it better before it is gone? I know they that are so much worse than childish, as prodigally to cast away so many hours in making themselves fine for the sight of men, and be not ashamed to come forth and show their sin to others, will scarce want words to excuse their crime, and prove it lawful, be they sense or nonsense. But conscience itself shall answer all, when time is gone, and make you wish you had been wiser. You know not, ladies and gallants, how precious a thing time is: you little feel what a price yourselves will set upon it at the last: you little consider what you have to do with it: you see not how it hasteth, and how near you stand to vast eternity! You little know how despised time will look a wakened conscience in the face! or what it is to be found unready to die! I know you lay not to heart these things; for if you did, you could not, I say, you could not so lightly cast away your time. If all were true that you say, that indeed your place and honour requireth, that your precious morning hours be thus spent, I profess to you, I should pity you more than galley-slaves, and I would bless me from such a place and honour, and make haste into the course and company of the poor, and think them happy that may better spend their time. But indeed your excuses are frivolous and untrue, and do but show that pride hath prevailed to captivate your reason to its service. For we know lords and ladies, as great as the rest of you, (though alas, too few,) that can be quickly up and dressed, and spend their early hours in prayer and adorning their souls, and can be content to come forth in a plain and incurious attire; and yet are so far from being derided, or thought the worse by any whose judgment is much to be regarded, that they are taken justly for the honour of their order: and if it were not that some few such keep up the honour of your rank, I will not tell you how little in point of morality it would be honoured.

_Thief_ IV. Another time-wasting thief is unnecessary pomp and curiosity in retinue, attendance, house furniture, provision and entertainments, together with excess of compliment and ceremony, and servitude to the humours and expectations of time-wasters.[294] I crowd them all together, because they are all but wheels of the same engine, to avoid prolixity. Here also I must prevent the cavils of the guilty, by telling you that I reprove not all that in the rich, which I would reprove if it were in the poor: I intend not to level them, and judge them by the same measure. The rich are not so happy as to be so free as the poor, either from the temptation, or the seeming necessity and obligation: let others pity the poor; I will pity the rich, who seem to be pinched with harder necessities than the poor; even this seeming necessity of wasting their precious time in compliment, curiosity, and pomp, which the happy poor may spend in the honest labours of their callings; wherein they may at once be profitable to the commonwealth, and maintain themselves, and meditate or confer of holy things. But yet I must say, that the rich shall give an account of time, and shall pay dear for that which unnecessary excesses do devour: and that instead of envying the state and curiosity of others, and seeking to excel or equal them to avoid their obloquy, they should contract and bring down all customs of excess, and show their high esteem of time, and detestation of time-wasting curiosity; and imitate the most sober, grave, and holy; and be a pattern to others of employing time in needful, great, and manly things; I say, manly, for so childish is this vice, that men of gravity and business do abhor it: and usually men of vanity that are guilty of it, lay it all on the women, as if they were ashamed of it, or it were below them. What abundance of precious time is spent in unnecessary state of attendance, and provisions! What abundance, under pretence of cleanliness and neatness, is spent in needless curiosity about rooms, and furniture, and accommodations, and matters of mere pride, vain-glory, and ostentation, covered with the honest name of decency! What abundance is wasted in entertainments, and unnecessary visits, compliments, ceremony, and servitude to the humours of men of vanity! I speak not for nastiness, uncleanness, and uncomeliness: I speak not for a cynical morosity or unsociableness. When conscience is awakened, and you come to yourselves, and approaching death shall better acquaint you with the worth of time, you will see a mean between these two; and you will wish you had most feared the time-wasting prodigal extreme.[295] Methinks you should freely give me leave to say, that though Martha had a better excuse than you, and was cumbered about many things for the entertainment of such a guest as Christ himself, (with all his followers,) who looked for no curiosity, yet Mary is more approved of by Christ, who neglected all this, to redeem the time for the good of her soul, by sitting at his feet to hear his word: she chose the better part, which shall not be taken from her. Remember, I pray you, that one thing is necessary: I hope I may have leave to tell you, that if by you or your servants, God, and your souls, and prayer, and reading the Scriptures, and the profitable labours of an honest calling, be all or any of them neglected, while you or they are neatifying this room, or washing out that little spot, or setting straight the other wrinkle, or are taken up with feminine trifling, proud curiosities, this is preferring of dust before gold, of the least before the greatest things:[296] and to say, that decency is commendable, is no excuse for neglecting God, your souls, or family, or leaving undone any one greater work, which you or your servants might have been doing that while; I say, any work that is greater all things considered. Oh that you and your families would but live, as those that see how fast death cometh! how fast time goeth! and what you have to do! and what your unready souls yet want! This is all that I desire of you: and then I warrant you, it would save you many a precious hour, and cut short your works of curiosity, and deliver you from your slavery to pride and the esteem of vain time-wasters.

_Thief_ V. Another time-wasting sin is needless and tedious feastings, gluttony, and tippling: which being of the same litter, I set together.[297] I speak not against moderate, seasonable, and charitable feasts: but alas, in this luxurious, sensual age, how commonly do men sit two hours at a feast, and spend two more in attending it before and after, and not improving the time in any pious or profitable discourse: yea, the rich spend an hour ordinarily in a common meal, while every meal is a feast indeed; and they fare as their predecessor, Luke xvi. deliciously or sumptuously every day. Happy are the poor, that are free also from this temptation. You spend not so much time in the daily addresses of your souls to God, and reading his word, and taking an account of the affairs of conscience, and preparing for death, as you do in stuffing your guts, perhaps at one meal. And in taverns and alehouses among the pots, how much time is wasted by rich and poor! O remember, while you are eating and drinking, what a corruptible piece of flesh you are feeding and serving; and how quickly those mouths will be filled with dust! and that a soul that is posting so fast unto eternity, should find no time to spare for vanity; and that you have important work enough to do, which if performed, will afford you a sweeter and a longer feast.

_Thief_ VI. Another time-wasting sin is idle talk. What abundance of precious time doth this consume! Hearken to most men's discourse when they are sitting together, or working together, or travelling together, and you shall hear how little of it is any better than silence: and if not better it is worse. So full are those persons of vanity who are empty, even to silence, of any thing that is good, that they can find and feed a discourse of nothing, many hours and days together; and as they think, with such fecundity and floridness of style, as deserveth acceptance if not applause. I have marvelled oft at some wordy preachers, with how little matter they can handsomely fill up an hour! But one would wonder more to hear people fill up, not an hour, but a great part of their day, and of their lives, and that without any study at all, and without any holy and substantial subject, with words, which if you should write them all down and peruse them, you would find that the sum and conclusion of them is nothing! How self-applaudingly and pleasingly they can extempore talk idly and of nothing a great part of their lives! I have heard many of them marvel at a poor unlearned christian, that can pray extempore many hours together in very good order and well-composed words. But are they not more to be marvelled at, that can very handsomely talk of nothing ten times as long, with greater copiousness, and without repetitions, and that extempore, when they have not that variety of great commanding subjects to be the matter of their speech? I tell you, when time must be reviewed, the consumption of so much in idle talk, will appear to have been no such venial sin, as empty, careless sinners now imagine.

_Thief_ VII. Another thief which by the aforesaid means would steal your time, is vain and sinful company. Among whom a spiritual physician that goeth to cure them, or a holy person that is full and resolute to bear down vain discourse, I confess may well employ his time, when he is cast upon it, or called to it. But to dwell with such, or choose them as our familiars, or causelessly or for complacency keep among them, will unavoidably lose abundance of your time. If you would do good, they will hinder you; if you will speak of good, they will divert you, or reproach you, or wrangle and cavil with you, or some way or other stop your mouths. They will by a stream of vain discourse, either bear down, and carry you on with them, or fill your ears, and interrupt and hinder the very thoughts of your minds by which you desire to profit yourselves, when they will not let you be profitable to others.

_Thief_ VIII. Another notorious time-wasting thief, is needless, inordinate sports and games, which are commonly stigmatized by the offenders themselves, with the infamous name of pastimes, and masked with the deceitful title of recreations; such as are cards and dice, and stage-plays, and dancings, and revellings, and excesses in the most lawful sports, especially in hunting, and hawking, and bowling,[298] &c. Whether all these are lawful or unlawful of themselves, is nothing to the present question; but I am sure that the precious hours which they take up, might have been improved to the saving of many a thousand souls, that by the loss of time are now undone and past recovery. Except malicious enemies of godliness, I scarce know a wretcheder sort of people on the earth, and more to be lamented, than those fleshly persons, who, through the love of sensual pleasure, do waste many hours day after day in plays and gaming and voluptuous courses; while their miserable souls are dead in sin, enslaved to their fleshly lusts, unreconciled to God, and find no delight in him, or in his service, and cannot make a recreation of any heavenly work. How will it torment these unhappy souls, to think how they played away those hours, in which they might have been pleasing God, and preventing misery, and laying up a treasure in heaven! And to think that they sold that precious time for a little fleshly sport, in which they should have been working out their salvation, and making their calling and election sure. But I have more to say to these anon.

_Thief_ IX. Another time-wasting thief is excess of worldly cares and business. These do not only, as some more disgraced sins, pollute the soul with deep stains in a little time, and then recede; but they dwell upon the mind, and keep possession, and keep out good: they take up the greatest part of the lives of those that are guilty of them. The world is first in the morning in their thoughts, and last at night, and almost all the day: the world will not give them leave to entertain any sober, fixed thoughts of the world to come; nor to do the work which all works should give place to. The world devoureth all the time almost that God and their souls should have: it will not give them leave to pray, or read, or meditate, or discourse of holy things: even when they seem to be praying, or hearing the word of God, the world is in their thoughts; and as it is said, Ezek. xxxii. 31, "They come unto thee as the people cometh; and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love; but their heart goeth after their covetousness." In most families there is almost no talk nor doings but all for the world: these also will know, that they had greater works for their precious time, which should have always had the precedency of the world.

_Thief_ X. Another time-waster is vain ungoverned and sinful thoughts. When men are wearied with vain works and sports, they continue unwearied in vain thoughts; when they want company for vain discourse and games, they can waste the time in idle, or lustful, or ambitious, or covetous thoughts alone without any company. In the very night time while they wake, and as they travel by the way, yea, while they seem to be serving God, they will be wasting the time in useless thoughts: so that this devoureth a greater proportion of precious time, than any of the former. When time must be reckoned for, what abundance will be found upon most men's accounts, as spent in idle, sinful thoughts! O watch this thief; and remember, though you may think that a vain thought is but a little sin, yet time is not a little or contemptible commodity, nor to be cast away on so little a thing as idle thoughts; and to vilify thus so choice a treasure is not a little sin; and that it is not a little work that you have to do in the time which you thus waste. And a daily course of idle thoughts doth waste so great a measure of time, that this aggravation maketh it more heinous than many sins of greater infamy. But of this more in the next part.

_Thief_ XI. Another dangerous time-wasting sin is the reading of vain books, play-books, romances, and feigned histories; and also unprofitable studies, undertaken but for vain-glory, or the pleasing of a carnal or curious mind. Of this I have spoken in my book of "Self-denial." I speak not here how pernicious this vice is by corrupting the fancy and affections, and breeding a diseased appetite, and putting you out of relish to necessary things. But bethink you before you spend another hour in any such books, whether you can comfortably give an account of it unto God; and how precious the time is, which you are wasting on such childish toys. You think the reading of such things is lawful; but is it lawful to lose your precious time? You say that your petty studies are desirable and laudable; but the neglect of far greater necessary things is not laudable. I discourage no man from labouring to know all that God hath any way revealed to be known; but I say as Seneca, We are ignorant of things necessary, because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary. Art is long and life is short: and he that hath not time for all, should make sure of the greatest matters; and if he be ignorant of any thing, let it be of that which the love of God, and our own and other men's salvation, and the public good, do least require, and can best spare. It is a pitiful thing to see a man waste his time in criticising, or growing wise in the less necessary sciences and arts, while he is yet a slave of pride or worldliness, and hath an unrenewed soul, and hath not learned the mysteries necessary to his own salvation. But yet these studies are laudable in their season. But the fanatic studies of those that would pry into unrevealed things, and the lascivious employment of those that read love-books, and play-books, and vain stories, will one day appear to have been but an unwise expense of time, for those that had so much better and more needful work to do with it. I think there are few of those that plead for it, that would be found with such books in their hands at death, or will then find any pleasure in the remembrance of them.

_Thief_ XII. But the master-thief that robs men of their time is an unsanctified, ungodly heart; for this loseth time whatever men are doing: because they never truly intend the glory of God; and having not a right principle or a right end, their whole course is hell-wards; and whatever they do, they are not working out their salvation: and therefore they are still losing their time, as to themselves, however God may use the time and gifts of some of them, as a mercy to others. Therefore a new and holy heart, with a heavenly intention and design of life, is the great thing necessary to all that will savingly redeem their time.

_Tit._ 5. _On whom this Duty of Redeeming Time is
principally incumbent._

Though the redeeming of time be a duty of grand importance and necessity to all, yet all these sorts following have special obligations to it.

_Sort_ I. Those that are in the youth and vigour of their time. Nature is not yet so much corrupted in you, as in old accustomed sinners; your hearts are not so much hardened; sin is not so deeply rooted and confirmed; Satan hath not triumphed in so many victories; you are not yet plunged so deep as others, into worldly encumbrances and cares; your understanding, memory, and strength are in their vigour and do not yet fail you: and who should go fastest, or work hardest, but he that hath the greatest strength? You may now get more by diligence in a day, than hereafter you can get in many. How few prove good scholars, or wise men, that begin not to learn till they are old! "Flee youthful lusts," therefore, 2 Tim. ii. 22. "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth," Eccles. xii. 1. If you be now trained up in the way you should go, you will not depart from it when you are old, Prov. xxii. 6. Oh that you could but know what an unspeakable advantage, and benefit, and comfort it is, to come to a ripe age with the provisions and furniture of that wisdom, and holiness, and acquaintance with God, which should be attained in your youth! and what a misery it is to be then to learn that which you should have been many years before in practising, and to be then to begin to live when you must make an end! much more to be cast to hell, if death should find you unready in your youth! or to be forsaken of God to a hardened age! Happy they that, with Timothy and Obadiah, do learn the Scripture and fear God in their childhood, and from their youth, 1 Kings xviii. 12; 2 Tim. iii. 15.

_Sort_ II. Necessity maketh it incumbent on the weak, and sick, and aged, in a special manner to redeem their time. If they will not make much of it that are sure to have but a little; and if they will trifle and loiter it away, that know they are near their journey's end, and ready to give up their accounts, they are unexcusable above all others. A thief or murderer will pray and speak good words when he is going out of the world. Well may it be said to you, as Paul doth, Rom. xiii. 11, 12, "Now is it high time to awake out of sleep," when your salvation or damnation is so near! It is high time for that man to look about him, and prepare his soul, and lose no time, that is so speedily to appear before the most holy God, and be used for ever as he has lived here.

_Sort_ III. It is specially incumbent on them to redeem the time, who have loitered and mispent much time already. If conscience tell you that you have lost your youth in ignorance and vanity, and much of your age in negligence and worldliness, it is a double crime in you, if you redeem not diligently the time that is left.[299] The just care of your salvation requireth it, unless you are willing to be damned. Ingenuity and duty to God requireth it; unless you will defy him, and resolve to abuse and despise him to the utmost, and spend all the time against him which he shall give you. The nature of true repentance requireth it; unless you will know none but the repentance of the damned; and begin to repent the misspending of your time, when it is gone, and all is too late.

_Sort_ IV. It is specially their duty to redeem the time, who are scanted of time through poverty, service, or restraint. If poor people that must labour all the day, will not redeem the Lord's day, and those few hours which they have, they will then have no time at all for things spiritual: servants that be not masters of their time, and are held close to their work, had need to be very diligent in redeeming those few hours which are allowed them for higher things.

_Sort_ V. Those that enjoy any special helps either public or private must be specially careful to improve them and redeem the time. Do you live under a convincing, powerful ministry? O improve it and redeem the time; for you know not how soon they may be taken from you, or you from them. Do you live with godly relations, parents, husband, wife, masters in a godly family, or with godly fellow-servants, friends, or neighbours? Redeem the time: get somewhat by them every day: you know not how short this season will be. Do you live where you have books and leisure? Redeem the time: this also may not be long. Had not Joshua been horribly unexcusable if he would have loitered when God made the sun stand still, while he pursued his enemies? O loiter not you, while the sun of mercy, patience, means, and helps do all attend you.

_Sort_ VI. Those must especially redeem the time who are ignorant, or graceless, or weak in grace, and have strong corruptions, and little or no assurance of salvation, and are unready to die, and have yet all or most of their work to do:[300] if these loiter, they are doubly to blame. Sure the time past of your lives may suffice to have loitered and done evil, 1 Pet. iv. 3. Hath not the devil had too much already? Will ye stand "all the day idle," Matt. xx. 6. Look home and see what you have yet to do; how much you want to a safe and comfortable death! "Sow to yourselves in righteousness: reap in mercy: break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you," Hos. x. 12.

_Sort_ VII. It much concerneth them to redeem the time, who are in any office, or have any opportunity of doing any special or public good; especially magistrates and ministers of Christ. Your life will not be long: your office will not be long: O bestir you against sin and Satan, and for Christ and holiness, while you may: God will try you but a time. Let Obadiah hide and feed the prophets when he is called to it, and while he may, that God may hide him, and not think to shift off duty, and save himself to a better time. Saith Mordecai to Esther, "Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house more than all the Jews: for if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall their enlargement and deliverance arise from another place, but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther ix. 13, 14. Are you ministers? O preach the gospel while you may: redeem the time: all times are your season: so great a work, and the worth of souls, commandeth you to do it "in season and out of season," 2 Tim. iv. 2. A man that is to save many others from drowning, or to quench a fire in the city, is unexcusable above all men, if he redeem not time, by his greatest diligence and speed.

_Sort_ VIII. Lastly, it is especially incumbent on them to redeem the time, who, being recovered from sickness, or saved from any danger, are under the obligation both of special mercy and special promises of their own; who have promised God in the time of sickness or distress, that if he would but spare them and try them once again, they would amend their lives, and live more holily, and spend their time more carefully and diligently for their souls, and show all about them the truth of their repentance, by the greatness of their change, and an exemplary life. Oh it is a most dangerous, terrible thing to return to security, sloth, and sin, and break such promises to God! Such are often given over to woeful hard-heartedness or despair; for God will not be mocked with delusory words.

Thus I have opened this great duty of redeeming time the more largely, because it is of unspeakable importance; and my soul is frequently amazed with admiration, that the sluggish world can so insensibly and impenitently go on in wasting precious time, so near eternity, and in so needy and dangerous a case. Though, I bless my God, that I have not wholly lost my time, but have long lived in a sense of the odiousness of that sin, yet I wonder at myself that such overpowering motives compel me not to make continual haste, and to be still at work with all my might, in a case of everlasting consequence.

FOOTNOTES:

[280] See the directions how to spend every day, part ii. chap. 17.

[281] Ex ipsâ vitâ discedimus, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo: commorandi enim nobis natura diversorium non habitandi domum dedit. Cic. in Cat. Maj.

[282] See my book called "Now or Never"

[283] Mors iis terribilis est, quorum cum vita omnia extinguuntur. Cicero. Parad. 1.

[284] See the many aggravations of sinful delay in my "Directions for Sound Conversion."

[285] Numb. ix. 2, 3, 7, 13; Exod. xiii. 10.

[286] Deut. xxviii. 12; Jer. v. 24; xxxiii. 20.

[287] Hag. i. 2, 4.

[288] 1 Sam. xiii. 8, 9.

[289] Psal. lxx. 5; Lev. xxvi. 4; Jer. v. 24.

[290] Acts vi. 5; Matt. vii. 17; Luke vi. 45; Matt. xii. 34.

[291] 1 Cor. x. 31; Zech. xiv. 20, 21; Rom. vi. 19, 22; Luke i. 75; 1 Tim. v. 5; iv. 5; 2 Tim. ii. 21.

[292] Phil. iii. 11-14.

[293] Nosti mores mulierum: Dum moliuntur, dum comuntur, annus est. Terent.

[294] Nihil mihi magis quam pompa displicet: non solum quia mala, et humilitati contraria, sed quia difficilis, et quieti adversa est. Petrarch. in Vita Sua.

[295] Nimia omnia nimium exhibent negotium.

[296] Abundance of little things that have all their conveniences have all their inconveniences also, and take up our time, and so would shut out greater things, if they be not cast aside themselves, and would become great sins by such a consumption of our time, Luke x. 42.

[297] Convivia, quæ dicuntur (cum sint commessationes modestiæ et bonis moribus inimicæ) semper mihi displicuerunt; laboriosum, et inutile ratus vocare et vocari, &c. Idem.

[298] Laertius saith of Solon, that Thespim tragœdias agere et docere prohibuit, inutilem eas falsiloquentiam vocans.

[299] 1 Pet. iv. 3.

[300] Eph. ii. 2.