390 APPENDIX. 



to ourselves : for such a bequest, we may thank 

 death, rather than the testator, saith St. Chrysos- 

 tom. But we are all Clinicks* in this point ; would 

 fain have a baptism in reserve, a wash for all our 

 sins, when we cannot possibly commit them any 

 more. Like Felix, the unjust governor, when 

 St. Paul f reasons of righteousness, our heads be- 

 gin to ache, and presently we adjourn, with, Go 

 thy way for this time, Kocipo]/ ^l f^ETocXuQovTBg, (as he 

 pretended) when we have time and opportunity, 

 and convenient leisure, (which we read not that 

 he ever found); in plain English, when we have no- 

 thing else to do, or can do nothing else, then we 

 will take forth this lesson ;^ — learn righteousness, 

 as Cato did Greek, ja7n Septuagenarius, just when 

 we are a dying ; — begin, then, to con our part, 

 when we are ready to be hissed off the stage, and 

 death is now pulling off our properties. But take 

 we heed in time : he may prove a false prophet, 

 that promiseth himself to die the death of the 

 righteous, when he hath loved and pursued the 

 ways and wages of unrighteousness all his life 

 long: who thinks, if he can but shape the last 

 faint breath he draws into a formal pretence of 

 forgiving all the world, and a sly desire of being 

 forgiven ; upon these two hangs the whole stress 

 of his righteousness; he goes out of God's school 

 upon fair terms, and thinks to render a plausible 



■* Tw ^avdrio %a§Kj «• Hom. xvii. in Ephes. 

 t Acts, xxiv. 25, 



