For, that it is the very sound of the sermon which bindeth up their
faculties, is manifest from hence, because they all awake so very
regularly as soon as it ceaseth, and with much devotion receive the
blessing, dozed and besotted with indecencies I am ashamed to repeat.

One cause of this neglect is, a heart set upon worldly things. Men
whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week, cannot
disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly, as to apply
to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart.
Tell an usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution, you talk to the
deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags,
or he is gravely asleep, and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of
business, that the cares of the world choke the good seed; that we must
not encumber ourselves with much serving; that the salvation of his
soul is the one thing necessary. You see, indeed, the shape of a man
before you, but his faculties are all gone off among clients and papers,
thinking how to defend a bad cause, or find flaws in a good one; or, he
weareth out the time in drowsy nods.

There are many who place abundance of merit in going to church, although
it be with no other prospect but that of being well entertained, wherein
if they happen to fail, they return wholly disappointed. Hence it is
become an impertinent vein among people of all sorts to hunt after what
they call a good sermon, as if it were a matter of pastime and diversion.

This indecent sloth is very much owing to that luxury and excess men
usually practise upon this day, by which half the service thereof is
turned to sin; men dividing the time between God and their bellies,
when, after a gluttonous meal, their senses dozed and stupified, they
retire to God's house to sleep out the afternoon. Surely, brethren,