It is an office of prudence to serve God so that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our estates, our interest and reputation, for ourselves and our relatives, so far as they can consist together. St. Paul in the beginning of Christianity was careful to instruct the forwardness and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry, and to catechize the men into good trades, and the women into useful employments, that they might not be unprofitable. For Christian religion carrying us to heaven, does it by the way of a man, and by the body it serves the soul, as by the soul it serves God; and therefore it endeavours to secure the body and its interest, that it may continue the opportunities of a crown, and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty price of our salvation: and this is that part of prudence which is the defensative and guard of a Christian in the time of persecution, and it hath in it much of duty.
He that through an indiscreet zeal casts himself into a needless danger, hath betrayed his life to tyranny, and tempts the sin of an enemy; he loses to God the service of many years, and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of working his salvation, in the main parts of which we shall find a long life and very many years of reason to be little enough; he betrays the interest of his relatives, which he is bound to preserve; he disables himself of making 'provision for them of his own house;' and he that fails in this duty by his own fault 'is worse than an infidel:' and denies the faith, by such unseasonably dying or being undone, which by that testimony he did intend gloriously to confess; he serves the end of ambition and popular services, but not the sober ends of religion; he discourages the weak, and weakens the hands of the strong, and by upbraiding their wariness tempts them to turn it into rashness or despair; he affrights strangers from entering into religion, while by such imprudence he shall represent it to be impossible at the same time to be wise and to be religious; he turns all the whole religion into a forwardness of dying or beggary, leaving no space for the parts and offices of a holy life, which in times of persecution are infinitely necessary for the advantages of the institution.
... purchase as much respite as you can; buy or 'redeem the time' by all honest arts, by humility, by fair carriage and sweetnesses of society, by civility and a peaceful conversation, by good words and all honest offices, by praying for your persecutors, by patient sufferance of what is unavoidable.
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