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[ 1159] The great work of Repentance not to be deferr'd; and why so?
GOd spake thus unto Noah,* 1.1 An hundred and twenty years hence will I bring in a Floud, that shall drown the whole World; and therefore if thou wilt be saved, go thy way out of hand, and build thee such an Ark as I will shew thee, Gen. 6. He was then 500 years old, and might have thought thus with himself, I am 500 years old, and it will yet be one hundreth and upwards before the Floud do come; Why? I may be dead and rotten in my grave before that time, or at leastwise very near the end of my dayes; And who would go moyl and toyl so about building a Vessel of such bulk and bignesse to prolong his life for so short a time? And if it must needs be done, I may go and take pleasure for these hundreth years yet, and then set upon it twenty or ten years before, and get more help then, and dispatch it the sooner: But Noah did not, he could not, he durst not defer the doing of it, but fells his wood, sawes out his planks,* 1.2 hewes out his timber, and so falls to work. The same case is ours, God foretells us, that a second general destruction shall come, not by Water, but by Fire, the fiercer Element of the twain, which even Heathens have taken notice of; And that none shall then be saved, but those that have a spirituall Temple, or Sanctuary built in their Souls, an house for the blessed Spirit to dwell in, as hard and difficult a work, as ever the making of the Ark was; For before the spiritual building can be raised, we must pull down an old Frame, of the De∣vills rearing, that standeth where it must stand, and rid the place of the rubbish and remainders of it. Let us then fall to work betime, we are so far from being able to promise to our selves a hundreth years, that we cannot assure our selves of one hour, no not of one minute.