_Direct._ XII. Whatever you are doing, in company or alone, let the day be spent in the inward excitation and exercise of the graces of the soul, as well as in external bodily duties. And to that end know, that there is no external duty, but must have some internal grace to animate it, or else it is but an image or carcass, and unacceptable to God. When you are praying and reading, there are the graces of faith, desire, love, repentance, &c. to be exercised there: when you are alone, meditation may help to actuate any grace as you find most needful: when you are conferring with others, you must exercise love to them, and love to that truth about which you do confer, and other graces as the subject shall require: when you are provoked or under suffering you have patience to exercise. But especially it must be your principal daily business, by the exercise of faith, to keep your hearts warm in the love of God and your dear Redeemer, and in the hopes and delightful thoughts of heaven. As the means are various and admit of deliberation and choice, because they are to be used but as means, and not all at once, but sometimes one, and sometimes another, when the end is still the same and past deliberation or choice; so all those graces which are but means, must be used thus variously, and with deliberation and choice; when the love of God and of eternal life must be the constant tenor and constitution of the mind, as being the final grace, which consisteth with the exercise of every other mediate grace. Never take up with lip-labour or bodily exercise alone, nor barren thoughts, unless your hearts be also employed in a course of duty, and holy breathings after God, or motion towards him, or in the sincere internal part of the duty which you perform to men: justice and love are graces which you must still exercise towards all that you have to deal with in the world. Love is called the fulfilling of the law, Rom. xiii. 10; because the love of God and man is the soul of every outward duty, and a cause that will bring forth these as its effects.
_Direct._ XIII. Keep up a high esteem of time; and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold or silver; and if vain recreations, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep, be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time, accordingly heighten your watchfulness and firm resolutions against them. Be not more careful to escape thieves and robbers, than to escape that person, or action, or course of life, that would rob you of any of your time. And for the redeeming of time, especially see, not only that you be never idle, but also that you be doing the greatest good that you can do, and prefer not a less before a greater.
_Direct._ XIV. Eat and drink with temperance and thankfulness; for health, and not for unprofitable pleasure. For quantity, most carefully avoid excess; for many exceed, for one that taketh too little. Never please your appetite in meat or drink, when it tendeth to the detriment of your health. Prov. xxxi. 4, 6, "It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink.--Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of heavy hearts." Eccles. x. 16, 17, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness!" Then must poorer men also take heed of intemperance and excess. Let your diet incline rather to the coarser than the finer sort, and to the cheaper than the costly sort, and to sparing abstinence than to fulness. I would advise rich men especially, to write in great letters on the walls of their dining-rooms or parlours these two sentences: Ezek. xvi. 49, "BEHOLD, THIS WAS THE INIQUITY OF SODOM, PRIDE, FULNESS OF BREAD, AND ABUNDANCE OF IDLENESS WAS IN HER, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." Luke xvi. 19, 25, "There was a certain rich man which was CLOTHED IN PURPLE AND SILK, AND FARED SUMPTUOUSLY every day.--Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." Paul wept when he mentioned them, "whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things, being enemies to the cross," Phil. iii. 18, 19.[42] O live not after the flesh, lest ye die, Rom. viii. 13; Gal. vi. 8; v. 21, 23, 24.