Whoever Reads and Considers this Emblem, will find it to be his own Case;
we promise, and we put-off, and we sin, and we go on Sinning: But still
as our Conscience Checks us for’t, we take up Faint Purposes, and Half
Resolutions to do so no more, and to lead a New Life for the future.
Thus the Young Fellow here, we Indulge our Selves in our Pleasures from
Time to time; and when we have Whil’d away our Lives, Day after Day,
from _One to Morrow to Another_, that same _to Morrow_ never comes.
This is the Sluggard’s Plea and Practice; the Libertine’s; the Miser’s;
and in short, whose is it not? Now if Man would but Consider the Vanity
and the Vexation of a Lewd Course of Life; the Impiety first of Entring
into Vows, which they intend Before-hand not to Perform, and afterward
of Breaking them; the Folly and the Presumption of Undertaking for any
thing that is wholly out of our Power; the Necessity of Emproving every
Moment of our Lives, the Desperate and the Irreparable Hazzard of Losing
Opportunities: People would not venture Body and Soul upon the necessity
of a Procrastinated Repentance; and Postpone the most uncertain Duties of
a Man and of a Christian. For there’s no _to Morrow_, nor any thing in
truth, but the Present Instant that we can call our Own.