Whoever considers this emblem, will find it to be his own case; we promise, and we put off, and we sin, and go on sinning: but still, as our conscience checks us for it, we take up faint purposes, and half resolutions, to do so no more, and to lead a new life for the future. Thus, with the young fellow here, we indulge ourselves in our pleasures from time to time; and when we have trifled 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 we would but consider the vanity and vexation of a lewd course of life; the impiety first of entering into vows, which we intend beforehand not to perform, and afterward of breaking them; the folly and the presumption of undertaking anything that is wholly out of our power; the necessity of improving every moment of our lives; the desperate and the irreparable hazard of losing opportunities; we should not venture body and soul upon the necessity of a procrastinated repentance, and postpone the most certain duties of a man, and of a Christian; for there is no To-morrow, nor anything, in truth, but the present instant, that we can call our own.
Part III.
FABLES, in Verse.
Fable I.
The Cuckoo Traveller.
A Cuckoo once, as Cuckoos use,