years, for perhaps thou shalt not live out this present! "Boast not for to-morrow, for thou knowest not what the day to come may bring forth." [1] Give not thyself to rest, but to labour; not to feastings and banquets, but to fasting and tears. Have a care of eternal life which awaits thee, for after death there is no means to merit any durable rest or contentment. [2] O eternal God, deliver me of Thine infinite goodness from the miserable deceits, before death seize upon me in them! Exhort Thou my soul to works that are pleasing unto Thee, that this day it may more and more separate itself from all such things as offend Thee! Amen.
POINT II.
Secondly, I am to consider the great losses they suffer in death that have been thus beguiled all their life, drawing them from the words of our Lord to this rich man, " Stulte, hac nocte animam tuam repetent a te, et quae prseparasti, cujus erunt?" "Thou fool! this night do they require thy soul of thee, and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" In this are touched four grievous losses, for which King David had great reason to say, that " the death of the wicked is very evil." [3]
1. " Thou fool" — The first loss is to die in his very folly, without falling into a reckoning of it till it be 'past remedy. For, late or early, both good and evil shall come to perceive their errors, but in a different manner: for the wicked continue in their error until death, and then, with the experience of their torments and miseries, they fall into a reckoning how much in their lifetime they were beguiled, calling themselves " Insensati," [4] " men without sense" or judgment. But the good in their lifetime perceive their error
