ord, which by the gospel is preached unto all, shall
endure for ever. Why then dost thou thus madly cling to and embrace
that glory, which, like spring flowers, fadeth and perisheth, and to
beastly unsavoury wantonness, and to the abominable passions of the
belly and the members thereunder, which for a season please the senses
of fools, but afterwards make returns more bitter than gall, when the
shadows and dreams of this vain life are passed away, and the lovers
thereof, and workers of iniquity are imprisoned in the perpetual pain
of dark and unquenchable fire, where the worm that sleepeth not gnaweth
for ever, and where the fire burneth without ceasing and without
quenching through endless ages? And with these sinners alas! thou too
shalt be imprisoned and grievously tormented, and shalt bitterly rue
thy wicked counsels, and bitterly regret thy days that now are, and
think upon my words, but there shall be no advantage in repentance; for
in death there is no confession and repentance. But the present is the
set time for work: the future for reward. Even if the pleasures of the
present world were not evanescent and fleeting, but were to endure for
ever with their owners, not even thus should any man choose them before
the gifts of Christ, and the good things that pass man's understanding.
Soothly, as the sun surpasseth in radiance and brightness the dead of
night, even so, and much more so, doth the happiness promised to those
that love God excel in glory and magnificence all earthly kinship and
glory; and there is utter need for a man to choose the more excellent
before the more worthless. And forasmuch as everything here is
fleeting and subject to decay, and passeth and vanisheth as a dream,
and as a shadow and vision of sleep; and as one may sooner trust the
unstable breezes, or the tracks of a ship passing over the waves, than
the prosperity of men, what simplicity, nay, what folly and madness it
is to choose the corruptible and perishable, the weak things of no
worth, rather than the incorruptible and everlasting, the imperishable
and endless, and, by the temporal enjoyment of these things, to forfeit
the eternal fruition of the happiness to come! Wilt thou not understand
this, my father? Wilt thou not haste past the things which haste pass
thee, and attach thyself to that which endureth? Wilt thou not prefer
a home land to a foreign land, light to darkness, the spirit to the
flesh, eternal life to the shadow