and
indeed then the Christian comes to his full stature, and is a perfect man
when he ceaseth to be a man.

How will you not be persuaded, beloved in the Lord, to long after this
life, to have Christ formed in your hearts, for truly the generality have
not so much as Christ fashioned in their outward habit, but are within
darkness and earthiness and wickedness, and without, impiety and
profanity. Will you not long for this life? For now you are dead while you
live, as the apostle speaks of widows that live in pleasure. The more the
soul be satisfied with earthly things, it is the deeper buried in the
grave of the flesh, and the further separated from God. Alas! many of you
know no other life, than that which you now live in the body, you neither
apprehend what this new birth is, nor what the perfect stature of it shall
be afterwards. But truly while it is thus, you are but walking shadows,
breathing clay, and no more. A godly man used to calculate the years of
his nativity from his second birth, his conversion to God in Christ; and
truly, this is the true period of the right calculation of life, of that
life which shall not see death. True life hath but one period, that is,
the beginning of it, for end it hath none. I beseech you, reckon your
years thus, and I fear that you reckon yourselves, many of you, yet dead
in sins and trespasses. Is that life, I pray you, to eat, to drink, to
sleep, to play, to walk, to work? Is there any thing in all these worthy
of a reasonable soul, which must survive the body, and so cease from such
things for ever? Think within yourselves, do you live any other life than
this? What is your life but a tedious and wearisome repetition of such
brutish actions which are only terminate on the body? O then, how
miserable are you, if you have no other period to reckon from than your
birth-day! If there be not a second birth-day before your burial, you may
make your reckoning to be banished eternally from the life of God.

As for you, Christians, whom God hath quickened by the Spirit of his Son,
be much in the exercise of this life, and that will maintain and advance
it. Let your care be about your spirits, and to hearten you in this study,
and to beget in you the hope of eternal life, look much and lay fast hold
on that life giving Saviour, who, by his righteous life and accursed
death, hath purchased by his own blood both happiness to us and holiness.
Consider what debtors you are to him who love