This is what damns men!

("The Vanity of the World!" Ezekiel Hopkins, 1663)

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Matthew 16:26

What senseless folly it is to purchase a vain and fleeting world, with the loss of our precious eternal souls!

Oh, think what great losers they must be, who lose their souls to gain this poor world; and must at last lose the world too, together with their souls!

This is what damns men: they prefer the pleasures, honors, profits, and pitiful nothings of the world-before their precious and immortal souls, which are worth more than ten thousand worlds!

Think how dreadful and tormenting will be the reflections of worldlings in Hell, to consider that there they must lie and burn to eternity for their inordinate love to that world, of which they have nothing left to them, besides the bitter remembrance! What will it then avail them, that they have lived here in ease and delights-when all their mirth shall be turned into groans and howlings? What will the remembrance of all their earthly treasures and riches then avail them, but to increase their torment?