Secondly, A wise man labours duly to time his care and endeavour for the attaining of what he proposeth. It is the fool that comes when the market is done : as the evil day is of great concernment in respect of its event, so the placing of our care for it in the right season is of chief imjDortance, and that sure nuist be before it comes. There are more doors than one at which the messenger may enter that brings evil tidings to us, and at which he will knock we know not ; we know not where we shall be arrested, whether at bed or board, whether at home or in the field, whether among our friends, that will counsel and comfort us, or among our enemies, that will add weight to our sorrow by their cruelty. We know not when, whether by day or night ; many of us, not whether in the morning, noon, or evening of our age. As he calls to work at all times of the day, so he doth to bed ; it may be while thou art praying or preaching, and it would be sad to go away profaning them and the name of God in them ; possibly when thou art about worse work ; death may strike thy quaffing-cup out of thy hand, while thou art sitting in the alehouse with thy jovial mates, or meet thee as thou art reeling home, and make some ditch thy grave, that as thou livedst like a beast, so thou shouldst die like a beast. In a word, we know not the kind of evil God will use as the instrument to stab us ; whether some bloody hand of violence shall do it, or a disease out of our bowels and bodies ; whether some acute disease, or some lingering sickness; whether such a sickness as shall slay the man while the body is alive, I mean, take the head and deprive us of our reason, or not; whether such noisome troubles as shall make our friends afraid to let us breathe on them, or themselves look on us ; whether they shall be afflictions aggravated with Satan's temptations, and the terrors of our own affrighted consciences, or not. Who knows where, when, or what the evil day shall be ? Therefore doth God conceal these, that we should provide for- all. Caesar would never let his soldiers know when or whither he meant to march. The knowing of these would torment us with distracting fear ; the not knowing them should awaken us to a providing care. It is an ill time to calk the ship when at sea, tumbling up and down in a storm ; this should have been looked to when on her seat in the harbour. And as bad it is to begin to trim a soul for heaven, when tossing on a sick bed. Things that are done in a hurry are seldom done well : a man called out of his bed at midnight, with a dismal fire on his house-top, cannot stand to dress himself in order as at another time, but runs down with one stocking half on, may be, and the other not on at all. Those poor creatures, I am afraid, go in as ill a dress into another world, who begin to provide for it when on a dying bed : conscience calls them up with a cry of hell-fire in their bosoms ; but, alas ! they must go, though they have not time to put their armour on ; and so they are put to repent at leisure in hell of their shuffling up a repentance in haste here. We come to the application of the point.
CHAPTER VII.
THE APPLICATION OF THE POINT.
Use 1. — It repi'oves those that are so far from providing for the evil day, that they will not suffer any thoughts of that day to stay with them ; they are as unwilling to be led into a discourse of this subject, as a child is to be carried into the dark, and there left : it is a death to them to think of death, or that which leads to it. As some foolishly think, they must needs die presently when they have made their will, so these think they hasten that sorrowful day by musing on it. The meditation of it is no more welcome to them, than the company of Moses was to Pharaoh : therefore they say to it, as he to Moses, ' Get thee from me, and let me see thy face no more.' The fear of it makes them to butcher and make away all those thoughts which conscience stirs up con- cerning it : and at last they get such a mastery of their consciences, that they arrive to a kind of atheism ; it is as rare to have them think or speak of such matters, as to see a fly busy in winter : nothing now but what is frolicsome and jocund is entertained by them. If any such thoughts come as prophesy mirth, and carnal content, these, as right with their hearts, are taken up into the
IN THE EVIL DAY. 179