An Answer to Them That Think God Doth Us Good by Necessity of Nature
Object. 1. They say “It is true that God hath much to do with us, and for us: but it followeth not that we have so much to do with him, or for him, as you would have us to believe: for he is necessarily good, and necessarily doth good; and therefore will do so, whether we think of him or not: the sun will not give over shining on me, though I never think on it, or never pray to it, or give it thanks. Nor doth God need any service that we can do him, no more than the sun doth: nor is he pleased any more in the praise of men, or in their works.”
Army. 1. It is most certain that God is good as necessarily as he is God: but it is not true that he must necessarily do good to you, or other individual persons; nor that he necessarily doth the good he doth to them. As he is not necessitated to make toads and serpents as happy as men, or men as angels; so he is not necessitated to save the devils or damned souls (for he will not save them.) And he was under no greater a necessity to save you, than them. He was not necessitated to give you a being: he could have passed you by, and caused others to have possessed your room. As it was God’s free will and not any necessity that millions more are never born, that were in possibility of it; (for all that is possible doth not come to pass) so that you and millions more were born, was not of necessity but of the same free will. And as God did not make you of necessity but of free will; so he doth not necessarily but freely justify, or sanctify, or save. If he did it by necessity of nature, he would do it to all as well as some; seeing all have a natural capacity of grace as well as those that receive it. God is able to sanctify and save more, yea all if it were his will; and it is not for want of power or goodness that he doth not. Millions of beings are possible which are not future. God doth not all the good which he is able, but communicateth so much to his several creatures as to his wisdom seemeth meet. If the damned would be so presumptuous as to argue, that because God is able yet to sanctify and save them, therefore he must do it of necessity of nature, it would not be long before they should thus dispute themselves out of their torments. God will not ask leave of sinners to be God; their denying him to be good (that is, to be God) because he complieth not with their con-VOL. II. F
78 Walking luith God,
eeits and wills, doth but prove them to be fools, and bad themselves.
Indeed some sciolists, pretending to learning’, while they are ignorant of most obvious princi- pies of natural knowledge, have taught poor sinners to cheat their souls with such dreams as these. They have made themselves believe that goodness in God is nothing else but his benignity, or disposition to do good; as if the creature were the ultimate end, and all God’s goodness but a means thereto; and so God were the Alpha or first efficient, and yet the creature the Omega or Jinis idtimus; and all the goodness in God were to be estimated and denominated by its respect to the felicity of man: and so the creature hath the best part of the deity. Such notions evidently shew us, that lapsed man is predominantly selfish, and is become his own idol, and is lost in himself, while he hath lost himself by his loss of God, when we see how powerful his self-interest is, both with his intellect and will. Even men of great ingenuity, till sanctification hath restored them to God, and taught them better to know him and themselves, are ready to measure all good or evil by their own interest; when yet common reason would have told them, if they had not perverted it by pride and partial studies, that short of God, even among the creatures, there are many things to be preferred before themselves and their own felicity. He is irrationally enslaved by o
self-love, that cannot see that the happiness of the world, or of his country, or of multitudes, is more to be desired than his happiness alone; and that he ought rather to choose, to be annihilated or to be miserable (if it were made a matter of his deliberation and choice) than to have the sun taken out of the firmament, or the world, or his country to be annihilated or miserable. And God is infinitely above the creature.
Object, But they say, he needeth nothing to make him happy, having no defect of happiness.
Answ, And what of that? Must it needs therefore follow that he made not all things for himself, but for the creature finally? He is perfectly happy in himself, and his will is himself: this will was fulfilled when the world was not made (for it was his will that it should not be made till it was made) and it is fulfilled when it is made, and fulfilled by all that comes to pass: and as the absolute simple goodness and perfection of God’s essence is the greatest good, the eternal immutable good; so the fulfilling of his will is the ultimate end of all obedience. He hath expressed himself to take pleasure in his works, and in the holiness, obedience and happiness of his chosen; and though pleasure be not the same thing in God as it is in man (no more than will or understanding is) yet it is not nothing which God expresseth by such terms, but something which we have no fitter expression for. This pleasing of the will of God f2 being the end of all, even of our felicity, is better than our felicity itself*
They that will maintain that God, who is naturally and necessarily good, hath no other goodness but his benignity or aptness to do good to his creatures, must needs also maintain that (God being for the creature, and not the creature for God) the creature is better than God, as being the ultimate end of God himself and the highest use of all his goodness being but for the felicity of the creature: as also that God doth do all the good that he is able (for natural necessary agents work ad ultimum posse): and that all men shall be saved, and all devils, and every worm and toad be equal to the highest angel; or else that God is not able to do it: and that he did thus make happy all his creatures from eternity (for natural necessary agents work always, if they be not forcibly hindered;) and that there never was such a thing as pain or misery, in man or brute; or else that God was not able to prevent it. But abundance of such odious consequences must needs follow from the denying of the highest good, which is God himself, and confessing none but his efficient o-oodness. But some will ba offended with me for being so serious in confuting such an irrational atheistical conceit, who know not how far it prevaileth with an atheistical generation.
Be it known to you, careless sinners, that though the sun will shine on you whether you thinli on it or not, or love it, or thank it or not; and the fire will warm you whether you think on it and love it or not, yet God will not justify or save you whether you love him or thmk on him or not. Ood doth not operate brutishly in your salvation, but governeth you wisely, as rational creatures are to be governed; and therefore will give you happiness as a reward: and therefore will not deal alike with those that love him and that love him not, that seek him and that seek him not, with the laborers and the loiterers, the faithful and the slothful servant. Would you have us beUeve that you know better than God himself what pleaseth 3iim, or on what terms he will give his benefits, and save men’s souls? or do you know his nature better than he knoweth it, that you dare presume to say — Because he needeth not our love or duty, therefore they are not pleasing to him? Then what hath God to do in governing the world, if he be pleased and dispkased with nothing that men do, or with good and evil actions equally? Though you cannot hurt him, you shall find that he will hurt you if you disobey him: and though you. cannot make him happy by your holiness, you shall find that he will not make you happy without it.
And if he did work as necessarily as the sun vdoth shine, according to your similitude; yet, 1. Even the shining of the sun doth not illuminate the blind nor doth it make the seeds of
82 Walkina: with God, thorns and nettles to bring forth vines or roses, nor the gendering of frogs to bring forth men; but it actuateth all things according to the several natures of their powers: and therefore how can you expect that an ignorant unbelieving and unholy soul, should enjoy felicity in God, when in that state they are uncapable of it? 2. And if the sun do necessarily illuminate any one, he must necessarily be illuminated; and if it necessarily warm or quicken any thing, it must be necessarily warmed and quickened; else you would assert contradictions. — So if God did necessarily save you and make you happy, you would necessarily be saved and made happy: and that containeth essentially your holiness, your loving, desiring and seeking after God. To be saved or happy without enjoying God by love, or to love him and not desire him, seek him, or obey him, are as great contradictions as to be illuminated without light, or quickened without life. What way soever it be that God conveyeth his sanctifying Spirit, I am sure that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his, Rom. viii. 9, and that without holiness none shall see God, Heb. xii. 14. and that if you will have the kingdom of God, you must seek it first, preferring it before all earthly things. Matt. vi. 33. John vi. 27. Col. iv. 1 — 3. And then if all the question that remaineth undecided be, whether God do you wrong or not in damning you, or whether
God be good because he will not save you when he can, I shall leave you to him to receive satisfaction, who will easily silence and confound your impudence, and justify his works and laws. Prepare your accusations against him, if you will needs insist upon them, and try whether he or you shall prevail: but remember that thou art a worm and he is God, and that he will be the only judge when all is done; and ignorance and impiety that prate against him, to their own confusion, in the day of his patience, shall not then usurp the throne.
ObjecL 2. But how can God be fit for mortals to converse with, when they see him not, and are infinitely below him?
Answ, I hope you will not say that you have nothing to do at home, with your own souls: and yet you never saw your souls. And it is the souls, the reason and the will of men that you daily converse with here in the world, more than their bodies, and yet you never saw their souls, their reason or their wills. If you have no higher light to discern by than your eyesight, you are not men but beasts. If you are men, you have reason, and if you are christians you have faith, by which yoi: know things that you never saw. You have more dependance on the things that are unseen, than on those which you see, and have much more to do with them.
And though God be infinitely above us, yet he condescendeth to communicate to us according to our capacities: as the sun is far from us, and yet dolh not disdain to enlighten, and warm, and quicken a worm or fly here below. If any be yet so much an atheist as to think that religious converse with God is but a fancy, let him well answer me these few questions.
Quest. 1. Doth not the continued being and well-being of the creatures, tell us that there is a God on whom (for being and well-being) they depend, and from whom they are and have whatsoever they are and whatsoever they have; and therefore that passively all the creatures have more respect to him by far than to one another?
Quest. 2. Seeing God comraunicateth to every creature according to their several capacities, is it not meet then that he deal with man as man, even as a creature rational, capable to know and love and obey his great Creator, and to be happy in the knowledge, love and fruition of him? That man hath such natural faculties and capacities, is not to be denied by a man that knoweth what it is to be a man: and that God hath not given him these in vain, will be easily believed by any that indeed believe that he is God.
Quest. 3. Is there any thing else that is finally worthy of the highest actions of our souls; or that is fully adequate to them, and fit to be our happiness? If not, then we are left either to certain infelicity, contrary to the tendency of ‘to
our natures, or else we must seek our felicity in God/
Quest. 4. Is there any thing more certain than that by the title of creation, our maker hath a full and absolute right to all that he hath made; and consequently to all our love and obedience, our time and powers? For whom should they all be used but for him from whom we have them?
Quest, 5. Can any thing be more sure, than that God is the righteous governor of the world? and that he governeth man as a rational creature, by laws and judgment? And can we live under his absolute sovereignty, and under his many righteous laws, and under his promises of salvation to the justified, and under his threatenings of damnation to the unjustified, and yet not have more to do with God than with all the world? If indeed you think that God doth not love and reward the holy and obedient, and punish the ungodly and disobedient, then either you take him not to be the governor of the world, or (which is worse) you take him to be an unrighteous governor: and then you must by the same reason say, that magistrates and parents should do so too, and love and reward the obedient and disobedient alike: but if any man’s disobedience were exercised to your hurt, by slandering, or beating, or robbing you, I dares«y you woidd not then commend so indifferent and unjust a governor.
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Quest. 6. If it be not needless for man ta labor for food and raiment, and necessary provision for his body, how can it be needless for him to labor for the happiness of his soul? If God will not give us our daily bread while we never think of it, or seek it, why should we expect that he will give us heaven though we never think on it, value it, or seek it?
Quest, 7. Is it not a contradiction to be happy in the fruition of God, and yet not to mind him, desire him, or seek him? How is it that the soul can reach its object, but by estimation, desire and seeking after it: and how should it enjoy it but by loving it, and taking pleasure in it?
Quest. 8. While you seem but to wrangle against the duty of believers, do you not plead against the comfort and happiness of believers? For surely the employment of the soul on God (and for him) is the health and pleasure of the soul; and to call away the soul from such employment, is to imprison it in the dungeon of this world, and to forbid us to smell to the sweetest flowers, and confine us to a sink or dunghill; and to forbid us to taste of the food of angels, or of men, and to offer us vinegar and gall, or turn us over to feed with swine. He that pleadeth that there is no such thing as real holiness and communion with God, doth plead in effect that there is no true felicity or delight for any of the sons of men: and how wek come should ungodly atheists be unto mankind, that would for ever exclude them all from happiness, and make them believe they are all made to be remedilessly miserable?
And here take notice of the madness of the unthankful world, that hateth and persecuteth the preachers of the gospel, that bring them the glad tidings of pardon, and hope, and life eternal, of solid happiness, and durable delight; and yet they are not offended at these atheists and ungodly cavillers, that would take them off from all that is truly good and pleasant, and make them believe that nature hath made them capable of no higher things than bea,sts, and hath inthralled them in reiuediless infelicity.
Quest. 9. Do you not see by experience that there are a people in the world whose hearts are upon God, and the life to come, and that make it their chiefest care and business to seek him * and to serve him? How then can you say that there is no such thing, or that we are not capable of it, when it is the case of so many before your eyes? If you say that it is but their fancy or self-^deceit; I answer, that really their hearts are set upon God, and the everlasting world, and that it is their chiefest care and business to attain it: this is a thing that they feel, Jird you may see in the bent and labor of their lives; and therefore you qannot call that a fancy, of which you have so full experience: but whether the motives that have invited them;, and engaged them to such a choice and course, be fancies and deceits or not, let God be judge, and let the awakened consciences of worldlings themselves be judge, when they have seen the end, and tried whether it be earth or heaven that is the shadow, and whether it be God or their unbelieving hearts that was deceived.
Quest, 10. Have you any hopes of living with God for ever, or not? If you have not, no wonder if you live as beasts, when you have no higher expectations than beasts. When we are so blind as to give up all our hopes, we will also give up all our care and holy dihgence, and think we have nothing to do with heaven: but if you have any such hopes, can you think that any thing is fitter for the chiefest of your thoughts and cares, than the God and kingdom, which you hope for ever to enjoy? Or is there any. thing that can be more suitable, or should be more delightful to your thoughts, than to employ them about your highest hopes, upon your endless happiness and joy? And should not that be now the most noble and pleasant employment for your minds, which is nearest to that which you hope to be exercised in for ever? Undoubtedly he that hath true and serious thoughts of heaven, will highliest value that life on earth which is likest to the life in heaven: and. he that hateth, or is most averse to that which is nearest to the work of heaven, doth boast in vain of his hopes of heaven.
By this time you may see (if you love not to be blind) that man*s chiefest business in the world is with his God, and that our thoughts and all our powers are made to be employed upon him, or for him; and that this is no such needless work as atheists make themselves believe.
Remember that it is the description of the desperately wicked, Ps. x. 4. that God is not in all his thoughts. And if yet you understand it not, I will a little further shew you the evil of such atheistical unhallowed thoughts.
1. There is nothing but darkness in all thy thouohts, if God be not in them. Thou knowest nothing, if thou knowest not him; and thou usest not thy knowledge, if thou use it not on him. To know the creature as without God, is to know nothing: no more than to know all the letters in the book, and not to know their signification or sense. All things in the world are but insignificant ciphers, and of no other sense or use, if you separate them from God, who is their sense and end. If you leave out God in all your studies, you do but dream and dote, and not understand what you seem to understand. Though you were taken for the learnedst men in the world, and were able to discourse of all the sciences, and your thoughts had no lower employment daily than the most sublime speculations which the nature of all .the creatures
90 WalJdnrr with God, doth afford, it is all but folly and impertinent dotage, if it reach not unto God.
2. Yea, your thoughts are erroneous and false, which is more than barely ignorant, if God be not in them. You have false thoughts of the world, of your houses and lands, and friends and pleasures, and whatsoever is the daily employment of your minds. You take them to be something, when they are nothing: you are covetous of the empty purse, and know not that you cast away the treasure: you are thirsty after the empty cup, when you wilfully cast away the drink: you hungrily seek to feed upon a painted feast: you murder the creature by separating it from God who is its life, and then you are enamoured on the carcass, and spend your days and thoughts in its cold embracements. Your thoughts are but vagabonds, straggling abroad the woHd, and following impertinences, if God be not in them. You are like men that walk up and down in their sleep, or like those that have lost themselves in the dark, who weary themselves in going they know not whither, and have no end, nor certain way.
3. If God be not in all your thoughts, they are all in vain. They are like the drone that gathereth no honey: they fly abroad and return home empty: they bring home no matter of honour to God, of profit or comfort to yourselves: they are employed to no more purpose than in your dreams; only they are more capably
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of sin: like the distracted thoughts of one that doteth in a fever, they are all but nonsense, whatever you employ them on, while you leave out God, who is the sense of all.
4. If God be not in all your thoughts, they are nothing but confusion: there can be no just unity in them, because they forsake him who is the only centre, and are scattered abroad upon incoherent creatures. There can be no true unity but in God: the further we go from him, the further we run into divisions and confusions. There can be no just method in them, because he is left out that is the beginning and the end. They are not Uke a well ordered army, where every one is moved by the will of one commander, and all know their colors and their ranks, and unanimously agree to do their work: but like a swarm of flies, that buzz about they know not whither, nor why, nor for what. There is no true government in your thoughts, if God be not in them; they are masterless and vagrants, and have no true order, if they be not ordered by him and to him: if he be not their first and last.
5. If God be not in all your thoughts, there is no life in them: they are but like the motion of a bubble, or a feather in the air: they are impotent as to the resisting of any evil, and as to the doing of any saving good: they have no strength in them, because they are laid out upon objects that have no strength: they hay<y.
no quickening, renewing, reforming, encouraging, resolving, confirming power in them, because there is no such power in the things on which they are employed: whereas the thoughts of God and everlasting life, can do wonders upon the soul: they can raise up men above this world, and teach them to despise the worldHng’s idol, and look upon all the pleasures of the flesh as upon a swine’s delight in wallowing in the mire. They can renew the soul, and cast out the most powerful beloved sin, and bring all our powers into the obedience of God, and that with pleasure and delight: they can employ us with the angels, in a heavenly conversation, and shew us the glory of the world above, and advance us above the life of the greatest princes upon earth: but the thoughts of earthly fleshly things have power indeed to delude men, and mislead them, and hurry them about in a vertiginous motion; but no power to support us, or subdue concupiscence, or heal our folly, or save us from temptations, or reduce us from our errors, or help us to be useful in the world, or to attain felicity at last. There is no life, nor power, nor efficacy in our thoughts, if God be not in them.
6. There is no stability or fixedness in your thoughts, if God be not in them. They are like a boat upon the ocean, tossed up and down with winds and waves: the mutable uncertain creatures can yield no rest or settlement to your minds. You are troubled about many thin^j and the more you think on themp and have to do with them, the more are you troubled: but you forget the one thing necessary, and fly from the eternal rock, on which you must build if ever you will be established. While the creature is in your thought instead of God, you will be one day deluded with its unwholesome pleasure, and, the next day feel it gripe you at the heart: one day it will seem your happiness, and the next you will wish you had never known it: that which seemeth the only comfort of your lives this year, may the next year make you weary of your lives. One day you are impatiently desiring and seeking it, as if you could not live without it; and the next day, or ere long, you are impatiently desiring to be rid of it. You are now taking in your pleasant morsels, and drinking down your delicious draughts, and jovially sporting it with your inconsiderate companions: but how quickly will you be repenting of all this, and complaining of your folly, and vexing yourselves, that you took not warning, and made not a wiser choice in time 1 The creature was never made to be your end, or rest, or happiness: and therefore you are but like a man in a wilderness or a maze, that may go and go but knoweth not whither, and findeth no end, till you come home to God, who only is your proper end, and make him the lord, and life, and pleasure of your thoughts. 7. As there is no present fixedness in your o
thoughts, so the business and pleasure of them will be of very short continuance, if God be not the chief in all. And who would choose to employ his thoughts on such things as he is sure they must soon forget, and never more have any business with to all eternity! You shall think of those houses, and lands, and friends, and pleasures but a little while, unless it be with repenting tormenting thoughts, in the place of misery: you will have no delight to think of any thing, which is now most precious to your flesh, when once the flesh itself decays, and is no more capable of delight. Ps. cxlvi. 4. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.”
Call in your thoughts then from these transitory things, that have no consistency or continuance, and turn them unto him with whom they may find everlasting employment and delight: remember not the enticing baits of sensuality and pride, but ‘^ Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”
8. Thy thoughts are but sordid, dishonorable, and low, if God be not the chiefest in them. They reach no higher than the habitation of beasts; nor do they attain to any sweeter employment than to meditate on the felicity of a brute: thou choosest with the fly to feed on dung and filthy ulcers, and as maggots to live on stinking carrion, when thou mightest have free access to God himself, and mightest be entertained in the court of heaven, and welcomed thither by the holy angels: thou wallowest in the mire with the swine, or diggest thyself a house in the earth, as worms and moles do, when thy thoughts might be soaring up to God, and might be taken up with high and holy and everlasting things. What if your thoughts were employed for preferment, wealth, and honor in the world? Alas! what silly things are these, in comparison of what your souls are capable of! You will say so yourselves, when you see how they will end, and fail your expectations. Imprison not your minds in this infernal cell, when the superior regions are open to their access: confine them not to this narrow vessel of the body, whose tossings and dangers on these boisterous seas will make them restless, and disquiet them with tumultuous passions, when they may safely land in paradise, and there converse with Christ. God made you men, and if you reject not his grace will make you saints: make not yourselves like beasts or vermin. God gave you souls that can step in a moment from earth to heaven, and there foretaste the endless joys: do not you stick then fast in clay, and fetter them with worldly cares, or intoxicate them with fleshly pleasures, nor employ them in the worse than childish toys of ambitious, sensual, worldly men: your thoughts have manna, angels’ food, provided them lpy God: if you will loathe this and refuse it, and choose with the serpent to feed on the dust, or upon the filth of sin, God shall be judge, and .your consciences one day shall be more faithful witnesses, whether you have dealt like wise men or like fools; like friends or enemies to yourselves; and whether you have not chosen baseness, and denied yourselves the advancement which was offered you.
9, If God be not the chiefest in your thoughts, they are no better than dishonest and unjust: you are guilty of denying him his own. He made not your minds for lust and pleasure, but for himself: you expect that your cattle, your goods, your servants, be employed for yourselves, because they are your own: but God may call your minds his Own by a much fuller title: for you hold all but derivatively and dependently from him. What will you call it but injustice and dishonesty, if your wife, or children, or servants, or goods, be more at the use and service of others, than of you? If any can shew a better title to your thoughts than God doth, let him have them; but if not, deny him not his own. O straggle not so much from home, for you will be nowhere else so well as there: desire not to follow strangers, you know not whither, nor for what: you have a master of your own, that will be better to you than all the strangers in the world. Bow not down to
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creatures, that are but images of the true and solid good: commit not idolatry or adultery with them in your thoughts: remember still that God stands by: bethink you how he will take it at your hands; and how it will be judged of at last, when he pleads his right, his kindness, and solicitations of you; and you have so little to say for any pretence of right or merit in the creature. Why are not men ashamed of the greatest dishonesty against God, when all that have any humanity left them, do take adultery, theft, and other dishonesty against creatures for a shame? The time will come when God and his interest shall be better understood; that this dishonesty against him, will be the matter of the most confounding shame, that ever did or could befal men. Prevent this by the juster exercise of your thoughts, and keeping them pure and chaste to God.
10. If God be not in your thoughts (and the chiefest in them) there will be no matter in them of solid comfort or content. Trouble and deceit will be all their work: when they have fled about the earth, and taken a taste of every flower, they will come loaded home with nothing better than vanity and vexation. Such thoughts may excite the laughter of a fool, and cause that mirth that is called madness, Eccles. vii. 4, 6, and ii. 2. but they will never conduce to settled peace, and durable content; and therefore they are always repented of themselves, and o
are troublesome to our review, as being the shame of the sinner, which he would fain be cleared of or disown. Though you may approach the creature with passionate fondness, and the most delightful promises and hopes, be sure of it, you will come off at last with grief and disappointment, if not with the loathing of that which you chose for your delight. Your thoughts are in a wilderness among thorns and briars, when God is not in them as their guide and end: they are lost and torn among the creatures; but rest and satisfaction they will find none. It may be at the present it is pleasanter to you to think of recreation, or business, or worldly wealth, than to think of God: but the pleasure of these thoughts is as delusory, and short-lived, as are the things themselves on which you think. How long will you think with pleasure on such fading transitory things? And the pleasure cannot be great at the present, which reacheth but the flesh and fantasy, and which the possessor knoweth will be but short: nay, you will shortly find by sad experience, that of all the creatures under heaven, there will none be so bitter to your thoughts, as those- which you now find greatest carnal sweetness in. O how bitter will the thought of idolized honour, and abused wealth and greatness be to a dying or a damned Dives! The thoughts of that alehouse or playhouse where thou hadst thy greatest pleasure, will trouble thee more than the thoughts of all the houses in the town besides: the thoughts of that one woman with whom thou didst commit thy pleasant sin, will wound and vex thee more than the thoug-hts of all the women in the town besides. The thoughts of that beloved sport which thou couldst not be weaned from, will be more troublesome to thee than the thoughts of a thousand other things in which thou hadst no inordinate delight. For the end of sinful mirth is sorrow. When Solomon had tried to please himself to the full, in mirth, in buildings, vineyards, woods, waters, in servants, and possessions, silver, and gold, and cattle, and singers, and instruments of music of all sort, in greatness, and all that the eye, or appetite, or heart desired, he findeth when he awaked from this pleasant dream, that he had all this while been taken up with vanity and vexation, in so much that he saith on the reView, “Therefore I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous to me, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit: yea I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun.” Eccles. ii. 1, 2, &c. 17, 18. You may toil out and tire yourselves among these briars, in this barren wilderness; but if ever you would feel any solid ground of quietness and rest, it must be by coming ofF from vanity, and seeking your felicity in God, and living sincerely for him and upon him, as the worldling doth upon the world. His pardoning mercy must begin your peace, forgiving you your former thoughts, and his healing quickening mercy must increase it, by teaching you better to employ your thoughts, and drawing up your hearts unto himself: and his glorifying mercy must perfect it, by giving you the full intuition and fruition of himself in heaven, and employing you in his perfect love and praise, not leaving any room for creatures, nor suffering a thought to be employed on vanity for ever.