This is what damns men!

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

(You will find it helpful to Listen to the Audio, as you read the text below.)

"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 your precious eternal soul!

Oh, think what great losers they must be, who lose their souls to gain this poor fleeting world. They 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 the reflections of worldlings in Hell will be, to consider that they must lie and burn there 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 while here on earth—when all their mirth shall be turned into groans and howlings? What will the remembrance of all their worldly trinkets and treasures then avail them, but to increase their torment?

"For what hope do the godless have when God cuts them off and takes away their life?" Job 27:8