For toys and trifles – Thomas Brooks

If they deserve a hanging, who feast their slaves, and starve their wives; who make provision for their enemies but none for their friend; how will you escape hanging in hell, who make provision for everything, yes, for all your lusts but make no provision for your immortal souls? What shall we think of those who sell their precious souls for toys and trifles which cannot profit?

Ah! do not pawn your souls, do not sell your souls, do not exchange away your souls, do not trifle and fool away your precious souls! They are jewels, more worth than a thousand worlds! If they are safe all is safe; but if they are lost all is lost: God lost, and Christ lost, and heaven lost and that forever!

Now if you are resolved to spend your strength in the service of sin and the world; then know that no tongue can express, no heart can conceive that trouble of mind, that terror of soul, that horror of conscience, that fear and amazement, that weeping and wailing, that crying and roaring, that sighing and groaning, that cursing and
howling, that stamping and tearing, that wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth which shall certainly attend you, when God shall bring you into judgment for all your looseness and lightness, for all your wickedness and wantonness, for all your profaneness and baseness, for all your neglect of God, your grieving the Comforter, your trampling under foot the blood of a Savior, for your prizing earth above heaven, and the pleasures of this world above the pleasures which are at God’s right hand.

Oh! how will you wish in that day when your sins shall be charged on you when justice shall be armed against you when conscience shall be gnawing within you when the world shall be a flaming fire about you when the gates of heaven shall be shut against you and the flame of hell ready to take hold of you when angels and saints shall sit in judgment upon you, and forever turn their faces from you when evil spirits shall be terrifying you and Jesus Christ forever disowning you; how will you, I say, wish in that day that you had never been born, or that you might now be unborn, or that your mothers’ wombs had been your tombs! Oh, how will you then wish to be turned into a bird, a beast, a stock, a stone, a toad, a tree! How you will say, Oh that our immortal souls were mortal! Oh that we were nothing! Oh that we were anything but what we are!