The dutiful ADVICE of a loving SON, to his aged FATHER.   flower 
LONDON, Printed by W. B. and are to be sold by W. Sheares at the sign of the Bible over against the North-door of Paul's 1650.   

The dutiful ADVICE OF A LOVING SON To his AGED FATHER.  
SIR,  
I Humbly beseech you, both in respect of the honour of God, your duty to his Church, and the comfort of your own soul, that you seriously consider in what terms you stand; and weigh yourself in a Christian balance, taking for your counterpoise the judgements of God: Take heed in time that the word TEKEL, written of old against Balthasar, and interpreted by Daniel, be not verified in you, whose exposition was, You have been poized in the scale, and found of too light weight.  
Remember that you are now in the weining, and the date of your pilgrimage well nigh expired, and now that it behoveth you to look towards your Country, your forces languisheth, your senses impair, your body droops, and on every side the ruinous Cottage of your faint and feeble flesh, threateneth the fall. And having so many harbingers of death to premonish you of your end, how can you but prepare for so dreadful a stranger. The young man may die quickly, but the old man cannot live long: the young man's life by casualty may be abridged, but the old man's by no physic can be long adjourned, and therefore if green years should sometimes think of the grave, the thoughts of old age should continually dwell in the same.  
The prerogative of Infancy is innocency; of Childhood, reverence; of Manhood, maturity; and of old age, wisdom.  
And seeing then that the chiefest properties of wisdom, are to be mindful of things past, careful for things present, and provident for things to come: Use now the privilege of nature's talent, to the benefit of your own soul, and procure hereafter to be wise in well doing, and watchful in the foresight of future harms. To serve the world you are now unable, and though you were able, yet you have little cause to be willing, seeing that it never gave you but an unhappy welcome, a hurtful entertainment, and now doth abandon you with an unfortunate farewell.  
You have long sowed in a field of flint, which could bring nothing forth but a crop of cares, and afflictions of spirit, rewarding your labours with remorse, and affording for your gain, eternal danger.  
It is now more than a seasonable time to alter the course of so unthriving a husbandry, and to enter into the field of God's Church, in which, sowing the seed of repentant sorrow, and watering them with the tears of humble contrition, you may hereafter reap a more beneficial harvest, and gather the fruits of everlasting comfort.  
Remember, I pray you, that your spring is spent, your summer overpast, you are now arrived at the fall of the leaf; yea, and winter colours have long since stained your hoary head.  
Be not careless (saith Saint Augustine) though our loving Lord bear long with offenders; for the longer he stays, not finding amendment, the sorer he will scourge when he comes to Judgement: And his patience in so long forbearing, is only to lend us respite to repent, and not any wise to enlarge us leisure to sin.  
He that is tossed with variety of storms, and cannot come to his desired Port, maketh not much way, but is much turmoiled; So, he that hath passed many years, and purchased little profit, hath a long being, but a short life; For, life is more to be measured by well doing, than by number of years: Seeing that most men by many days do but procure many deaths, and others in short space attain to the life of infinite ages; what is the body without the soul, but a corrupt carcase? And what is the soul without God, but a sepulchre of sin?  
If God be the Way, the Life, and the Truth, he that goeth without him, strayeth; and he that liveth without him, dieth; and he that is not taught by him, erreth.  
Well (saith Saint Augustine) God is our true and chiefest Life, from whom to revolt, is to fall; to whom to return, is to rise, and in whom to stay, is to stand sure.  
God is he, from whom to departed, is to die; to whom to repair, is to revive; and in whom to dwell, is life for ever: Be not then of the number of those that begin not to live, till they be ready to die: and then after a foes desert, come to crave of God a friend's entertainment.  
Some there be that think to snatch Heaven in a moment, which the best can scarce attain unto in the maintenance of many years, and when they have glutted themselves with worldly delights, would jump from Dives Diet, to Lazarus Crown, from the service of Satan, to the solace of a Saint.  
But be you well assured, that God is not so penurious of friends, as to hold himself and his Kingdom salealbe for the refuse and reversions of their lives, who have sacrificed the principal thereof to his enemies, and their own brutish lust; then only ceasing to offend, when the ability of offending is taken from them.  
True it is, that a thief may be saved upon the cross, and mercy sound at the last gasp: But well (saith S. Augustine) though it be possible, yet it is scarce credible, that the d●ath should find favour, whose whole life deserved death; and that the repentance should be more excepted, that more for fear of hell, and love of himself, than for the love of God, and loathsomeness of sin crieth for mercy.  
Wherefore, good SIR, make no longer delays; but being so near the breaking up of your mortal house, take time before extremity, to pacify God's anger.  
Though you suffer the bud to be blasted, though you permitted the fruits to be perished, and the leaves to dry up; yea, though you let the boughs to whither, and the body of your tree to grow to decay, yet (alas) keep life in the root, for fear lest the whole tree become fuel for hell fire; For surely where the tree falleth, there it shall lie, whether towards the South, or to the North, to Heaven, or to hell; and such sap as it bringeth forth, such fruit shall it ever bear.  
Death hath already filled from you the better part of your natural forces, and left you now to the Lees, and remissals of your wearyish and dying days.  
The remainder whereof, as it cannot be long, so doth it warn you speedily to ransom your former losses; for what is age, but the Calends of death, & what importeth your present weakness, but an earnest of your approaching dissolution, you are now embarked in your final voyage, and not far from the stint and period of your course.  
Be not therefore unprovided of such appurtenances as are behooveful in so perplexed and perilous a Journey; death itself is very fearful, but much more terrible, in respect of the judgement it summoneth us unto.  
If you were now laid upon your departing-bed, burdened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a festered Conscience; if you felt the cramp of death wresting your heartstrings, and ready to make the rueful divorce between body and soul: If you lay panting for breath, and swimming in a cold and pale sweat, wearied with struggling against your deadly pangs, O what would you give for an hours repentance; at what rate would you value a days contrition? Then worlds would be worth less in respect of a little respite, a short truce would seem more precious than the treasures of an Empire, nothing would be so much esteemed as a short trice of time, which now by days, and months, and years, is most lavishly misspent.  
Oh how deeply would it wound your woeful heart, when looking back into your former life, you considered many heinous and horrible offences committed, many pious works, and godly deeds omitted, and neither of both repent, your service to God promised, and not performed.  
Oh how unconsolably were your case, your friends being fled, your senses affrighted, your thoughts amazed, your memory decayed, and your whole mind aghast, and no part able to perform what it should; but only your guilty Conscience pestered with sin, that would continually upbraid you with many bitter accusations.  
Oh what would you think then, being stripped out of this mortal weed, and turned out both of service and houseroom of this wicked world, you are forced to enter into uncouth and strange paths, and with unknown and ugly company, to be convented before a most severe Judge, carrying in your Conscience your Indictment, written in a perfect Register of all your misdeeds, when you shall see him prepared to give sentence upon you, against whom you have so often transgressed, and the same to be your Umpire, whom by so many offences you have made your enemies, when not only the Devil, but even the Angels would plead against you, and your own self, in despite of yourself, be your own most sharp appeacher.  
Oh what would you do in these dreadful exigents, when you saw the ghastly Dragon, and huge gulf of hell, breaking out with most fearful flames, when you heard the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth; the rage of those hellish monsters, the horror of the place, the terror of the company, and the eternity of all those torments.  
Would you then think them wise that should delay in so weighty matters, and idly play away the time allotted, to prevent these intolerable calamities? Would you then count it secure, to nurse in your own bosom so many Serpents as sins? and to foster in your souls so many malicious Accusers, as mortal and horrible offences? Would you not think one life too little to repent in, for so many, and so great iniquities, every one whereof were enough to throw you into those unspeakable and intolerable torments.  
And why then (alas) do you not at the least devote that small remnant, and surplusage of these your latter days, procuring to make an atonement with God, and to free your Soul and Conscience from that corruption, which by your fall hath crept into it.  
Those very eyes that behold, and read this Discourse, those very ears that are attentive to hear it, and that very understanding that considereth and conceiveth it, shall be cited as certain witnesses of these rehearsed things. In your own body shall you experience these deadly Agonies, and in your soul shall you feelingly find these terrible fears; yea, and your present estate, is in danger of the deepest harms, if you do not the sooner recover yourself into that fold and family of God's faithful servants.  
What have you gotten by being so long a customer to the world, but false ware, suitable to the shop of such a merchant, whose traffic is toil, whose wealth is trash, and whose gain is misery? What interest have you reaped, that might equal your detriment in grace and virtue? Or what could you find in the vale of tears, that was answerable to the favour of God, with loss whereof, you were contented to buy it.  
You cannot now be inveigled with the passions of youth, which making a partiality of things, sets no distance between counterfeit and currant, for these are now worn out of force, by tract of time are fallen into reproof by trial of their folly.  
Oh let not the crazy cowardness of flesh and blood, daunt the prowess of an intelligent person, who by his wisdom cannot but discern how much more cause there is, and how much more needful it is to serve God, than this wicked world.  
But if it be the ungrounded presumption of the mercy of God, and the hope of his assistance at the last plunge (which indeed is the ordinary lure of the devil) to reclaim sinners from the pursuit of Repentance. Alas, that is too palpable a collusion to misled a sound and serviceable man, howsoever it may prevail with sick and illaffected judgements: who would rely upon eternal affairs, upon the gliding slipperiness, and running streams of our uncertain life? who, but one of distempered wits, would offer fraud to the Decipherer of all thoughts; with whom dissemble we may to our cost, but to deceive him, is impossible.  
Shall we esteem it cunning to rob the time from him, and bestow it on his enemies, who keepeth tale of the least minutes, and will examine in the end how every moment hath been employed. It is a preposterous kind of policy, in any wise conceit to fight against God, till our weapons be blunted, our forces consumed, our limbs impotent, and our best time spent; and then when we fall for faintness, and have fought our ●elves almost dead, to presume on his mercy.  
Oh! no, no, the wounds of his most sacred body, so often rubbed, and renewed by our sins, and every part and parcel of our bodies so divers, and sundry ways abused, will be then as so many whetstones and incentives, to edge and exasperate his most just revenge against us.  
It is a strange piece of Art, and a very exorbitant course, when the Ship is sound, the Pilot well, the Mariners strong, the Gale favourable, and the Sea calm, to lie idly at the road, burning so seasonable weather: And when the Ship leaketh, the Pilot sick, the Mariners faint, the Storms boisterous, and the Seas a turmoil of outrageous Surges, then to launch forth, (hoist up sail) and set out for a long voyage into a far Country.  
Yet such is the skill of these evening Repenters, who though in the soundness of their health, and perfect use of ●heir reason, they cannot resolve to cut the Cables, and weigh the Anchor that withholds them from God.  
Nevertheless, they feed themselves with a strong persuasion, that when they are astonished, their wits distracted, the understanding dusked, and the bodies and souls wracked, and tormented with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness, then forsooth they will begin to think of their weightiest matters, and become sudden Saints, when they are scarce able to behave themselves like reasonable creatures.  
No, no, if neither the Canon, Civil, nor the Common Law will allow that man (perished in judgement) should make any Testament of his temporal substance; How can he that is animated with inward garboils of an unsettled Conscience, distrained with the ringing sits of his dying flesh, maimed in all his ability, and circled in on every side with many and strange incumberances, be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest Jewel, which is his Soul, and to dispatch the whole manage of all eternity, and of the treasures of Heaven in so short a spurt.  
No, no, they that will loiter in seedtime, and begin to sow when others reap; they that will riot out their health, and begin to cast their accounts when they are scarce able to speak; th●y that will slumber out the day, and enter their journey when the light doth fail them, let them blame their own folly, if they die in debt, and be eternal beggars, and fall headlong into the lap of endless perdition.  
Let such listen to S. Cyprians lesson; Let, saith he, the grievousness of our sore be the measure of our sorrow; let a deep wound have a deep and diligent cure; Let no man's contrition be l●ss than his Crime.  
FINIS.