upon you Then shall they call upon me but I will not answer they shall seek me early but they shall not find me For that they hated knowledge and did not chuse the fear of the Lord They would none of my counsel they despised all my reproofe Therefore shall they eat the fruit of their own ways and be filled with their own devices The ease of the simple shall slay them and the prosperity of fooles shall destroy them To which I will add that terrible Passage in the Prophet concerning the perverse and obstinate Jews They are a People of no understanding therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them and he that formed them will shew them no favour And men are miserable Creatures indeed when God their Maker doth abandon them and hath so far hardened his heart against them that he can have no pity and compassion for them Seventhly and lastly which is consequent upon all the rest God is such a Good as can give perfect rest and tranquillity to our minds And that which cannot do this though it had all the Properties before mentioned cannot make us happy For he is not happy who does not think himself so whatever cause he may have to think so Now what in reason can give us disquiet if we do firmly believe that there is a God and that his Providence rules and governs all things for the best and that God is all that to good Men which hath now been said of Him Why should not our minds be in perfect repose when we are secure of the chief Good and have found out that which can make us happy and is willing to make us so if we be not wanting to our selves and by our wilful obstinacy and rebellion against him do not oppose and frustrate this design If a considerate Man were permitted to his own choice to wish the greatest good to himself that he could possibly devise after he had searched Heaven and Earth the result of all his wishes would be that there were just such a Being as we must necessarily conceive God to be Nor would he chuse any other Friend or Benefactour any other Protectour for himself or Governour for the whole World than infinite Power conducted and managed by infinite Wisdom and Goodness which is the true Notion of a God After all his enquiry he would come to the Psalmist's conclusion here in the Text Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee Vain Man is apt to seek for happiness elsewhere but this proceeds from want of due consideration For when all things are well weigh'd and all accounts rightly cast up and adjusted we shall at last settle in David's resolution of that great Question What is the chief Good of man There be many says he that say Who will shew us any good that is men are generally inquisitive after happiness but greatly divided in their Opinions about it most men place it in the present enjoyments of this World but David for his part pitches upon God in whom he was fully convinc'd that the happiness of man does consist There be many that say who will shew us any good Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their Corn and Wine increased The great joy of the men of this World is in a plentiful Harvest and the abundance of the good things of this life But David had found that which gave more joy and gladness to his heart the favour of God and the light of his countenance This gave perfect rest and tranquillity to his mind so that he needed not to enquire any further For so it follows in the next words I will both lay me down in peace and rest for thou Lord onely makest me to dwell in safety The Hebrew word signifies confidence or security Here and no where else his mind found rest and was in perfect ease and security I shall now only make two or three Inferences from this Discourse and so conclude First This plainly shews us the great unreasonableness and folly of Atheism which would banish the belief of God and his Providence out of the World Which as it is most impious in respect of God so is it most malicious to Men because it strikes at the very foundation of our happiness and perfectly undermines it For if there were no God man would evidently be the most unhappy of all other Beings here below because his unhappiness would be laid in the very frame of his nature in that which distinguishes him from all other Beings below him I mean in his Reason and Understanding And he would be so much more miserable than the Beasts by how much he hath a farther reach and a larger prospect of future evils a quicker apprehension and a deeper and more lasting resentment of them So that if any man could see reason to stagger his belief of a God or of his Providence as I am sure there is infinite reason to the contrary yet the belief of these things is so much for the interest and comfort and happiness of Mankind that a wise man would be heartily troubled to part with a Principle so favourable to his quiet and that does so exactly answer all the natural desires and hopes and fears of men and is so equally calculated both for our comfort in this World and for our happiness in the other For when a man's thoughts have ranged and wandered as far as they can his mind can find no rest no probable foundation of happiness but God onely no other reasonable no nor tolerable Hypothesis and Scheme of things for a wise man to rely upon and to live and die by For no other Principle but this firmely believed and truly lived up to by an answerable practise was ever able to support the generality of Mankind and to minister true consolation to them under the calamities of life and the pangs of death And if there were not something real in the Principles of Religion it is impossible that they should have so remarkeable and so regular an effect to support our minds in every condition upon so great a number of persons of different degrees of understanding of all ranks and conditions young and old learned and unlearned in so many distant Places and in all Ages of the World the Records whereof are come down to us I say so real and so frequent and so regular an effect as this is cannot with any colour of reason be ascribed either to blind Chance or meer Imagination but must have a real and regular and uniform cause proportionable to so great and general an effect I remember that Grotius in his excellent Book of the Truth of the Christian Religion hath this observation That God did not intend that the Principles of Religion should have the utmost evidence that any thing is capable
troubled at it Thus man walketh in a vain shew and disquieteth himself in vain courting happiness in a thousand shapes and the faster he follows it the swifter it flyes from him Almost every thing promiseth happiness to us at a distance such a step of Honour such a pitch of Estate such a Fortune or Match for a Child But when we come nearer to it either we fall short of it or it falls short of our expectation and it is hard to say which of these is the greatest disappointment Our hopes are usually bigger than enjoyment can satisfie and an evil long fear'd besides that it may never come is many times more painful and troublesome than the evil it self when it comes In a word man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards He comes into the world naked and unarm'd and from himself more destitute of the natural means of his security and support than any other Creature whatsoever as it were on purpose to shew that he is more peculiarly the care of a Superior Providence And as man of all the Creatures of this lower world is only made to own and acknowledg a Deity so God in great wisdom hath so order'd things that none of the other Creatures should have so much need of Him and so much reason to acknowledg their necessary dependance upon him So that the words of David are the very sense and voice of Nature declaring to us that Mankind is born into the World upon terms of greater dependance upon the Providence of God than other Creatures Thou art he says David there to God that tookest me out of the womb thou madest me to hope or thou didst keep me in safety when I was upon my mother's breasts I was cast upon thee from the womb thou art my God from my mother's belly Be not far from me for trouble is near Trouble is always near to us and therefore it is happy for us that God is never far from any of us For in Him we live and move and have our being And when we are grown up we are liable to a great many mischiefs and dangers every moment of our lives and without the Providence of God continually insecure not only of the good things of this life but even of life it self So that when we come to be men we cannot but wonder how ever we arriv'd at that state and how we have continued in it so long considering the infinite difficulties and dangers which have continually attended us That in running the gantlope of a long life when so many hands have been lifted up against us and so many strokes levell'd at us we have escaped so free and with so few marks and scars upon us That when we are besieged with so many dangers and so many arrows of death are perpetually flying about us to which we do so many ways lie open we should yet hold out twenty forty sixty years and some of us perhaps longer and do still stand at the mark untouch'd at least not dangerously wounded by any of them And considering likewise this fearful and wonderful frame of a human Body this infinitely complicated Engine in which to the due performance of the several functions and offices of life so many strings and springs so many receptacles and channels are necessary and all in their right frame and order and in which besides the infinite imperceptible and secret ways of mortality there are so many sluces and flood-gates to let Death in and Life out that it is next to a miracle tho we take but little notice of it that every one of us did not dye every day since we were born I say considering the nice and curious frame of our Bodies and the innumerable contingencies and hazards of human Life which is set in so slippery a place that we still continue in the land of the living we cannot ascribe to any thing but the watchful Providence of Almighty God who holds our soul in life and suffers not our foot to be moved To the same merciful Providence of God we owe that whilst we continue in life we have any comfortable possession and enjoyment of our selves and of that which makes us men I mean our Reason and Understanding That our Imagination is not let loose upon us to haunt and torment us with melancholick freaks and fears That we are not deliver'd up to the horrors of a gloomy and guilty mind That every day we do not fall into frenzy and distraction which next to wickedness and vice is the sorest calamity and saddest disguise of human nature I say next to wickedness and vice which is a wilful frenzy a madness not from misfortune but from choice whereas the other proceeds from natural and necessary causes such as are in a great measure out of our power so that we are perpetually liable to it from any secret and sudden disorder of the Brain from the violence of a Disease or the vehement transport of any Passion Now if things were under no government what could hinder so many probable evils from breaking in upon us and from treading upon the heels of one another like the Calamities of Job when the hedge which God had set about him and all that he had was broken down and removed So that if there were no God to take care of us we could be secure of no sort no degree of happiness in this World no not for one moment And there would be no other World for us to be happy in and to make amends to us for all the fears and dangers all the troubles and calamities of this present life For God and another World stand and fall together Without Him there can be no Life after this and if our hopes of happiness were only in this Life Man of all other Beings in this lower World would certainly be the most miserable I cannot say that all the Evils which I have mentioned would happen to all if the Providence of God did not rule the World but that every man would be in danger of them all and have nothing to support and comfort him against the fear of that danger For the nature of man consider'd by it self is plainly insufficient for its own happiness so that we must necessarily look abroad and seek for it somewhere else And who can shew us that good that is equal to all the wants and necessities all the capacities and desires all the fears and hopes of human nature Whatsoever can answer all these must have these following Properties First It must be an all-sufficient good Secondly It must be perfect goodness Thirdly It must be firm and unchangeable in it self Fourthly It must be such a good as none can deprive us of and take away from us Fifthly It must be eternal Sixthly It must be able to support and comfort us in every condition and under all the accidents and adversities of human Life Lastly It must be such a good as can give perfect
rest and tranquillity to our minds Nothing that is short of all this can make us happy And no Creature no not the whole Creation can pretend to be all this to us All these Properties meet only in God who is the perfect and supream Good as I shall endeavour in the following Discourse more particularly to shew and consequently That God is the only happiness of Man First God is an all-sufficient Good And this does import two things Wisdom to contrive our happiness and Power to effect it for neither of these without the other is sufficient and both these in the highest and most eminent degree are in God He is infinitely Wise to design and contrive our happiness because he knows what Happiness is and how to frame us so as to be capable of the happiness he designs for us and how to order and dispose all other things so as that they shall be no hindrance and impediment to it He perfectly understands all the possibilities of things and how to fit means to any end He knows all our wants and how to supply them all our hopes and desires and how to satisfy them He foresees all the dangers and evils which threaten us and knows how to prevent or divert them if he think fit or if he permit them to come how to support us under them or to deliver us out of them or to turn them to our greater benefit and advantage in the last issue and result of things His Wisdom cannot be surprised by any accident which he did not foresee and which he is not sufficiently provided against The wisdom of men is but short and imperfect and liable to infinite errours and mistakes In many cases men know not what is safest and best for them nor whether this or that will conduce most to their happiness Nay it often happens that those very means which the wisest men chuse for their security do prove the occasions of their ruine and they are thrown down by those very ways whereby they thought to raise and to establish themselves Especially if God breath upon the Counsels of men how are their designs blasted How are they infatuated and foil'd in their deepest contrivances and snared in the work of their own hands When it is of the Lord the wisdom of the greatest Politicians is turned into foolishness For there is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord. But the Divine wisdom being founded upon infinite knowledge is thereby secur'd against all possibility of errour and mistake God perfectly knows the natures and the powers of all his Creatures and therefore can never be mistaken in the use and application of them to any of his purposes So that none of his designs of love and mercy to the Sons of men can miscarry for want of good contrivance or wise conduct And as he is perfectly wise to contrive our happiness so is he infinitely powerful to effect it and to remove out of the way all the obstacles and impediments of it We may understand many times what would conduce to our happiness but may not be able to compass it but nothing is out of the reach of Omnipotency Many things are difficult to us but nothing is too hard for God Many things are impossible with us but with God all things are possible For He is the fountain and original of all power from whom it is deriv'd and upon whom it depends and to whom it is perfectly subject and subordinate He can do all things at once and in an instant and with the greatest ease and no created power can put any difficulty in his way much less make any effectual resistance because Omnipotency can check and countermand and bear down before it all other Powers So that if God be on our side who can be against us We may safely commit our Souls into his hands for he is able to keep that which is committed to him He can give us all good things and deliver us from all evil for his is the Kingdom and the glorious Power Though all Creatures should fail us we may rely upon God and live upon his All-sufficiency for our supply and may say with the Prophet Though the Figtree should not blossom neither Fruit be in the Vine though the labour of the Olive should fail and the Fields should yield no meat though the Flock should be cut off from the Fold and there should be no Herd in the Stalls yet would I rejoice in the Lord and joy in the God of my Salvation Secondly As God is an All-sufficient Good so He is perfect Goodness He is willing to communicate happiness to us and to employ his Power and Wisdom for our good He made us that he might make us happy and nothing can hinder us from being so but our selves Such is his goodness that he would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth And when we have provoked him by our sins he is long suffering to usward not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance For he delighteth not in the death of a sinner but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live So that if any of us be miserable it is our own choice if we perish our destruction is of our selves For as the Wiseman in one of the Apocryphal Books says excellently God made not death neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living But men seek death in the errour of their life and pull destruction upon themselves with the works of their own hands So great is the goodness of God to mankind that he hath omitted nothing that is necessary to our happiness He design'd it for us at first and to that end he hath endued us with powers and faculties whereby we are capable of knowing and loving and obeying and enjoying Him the chief Good And when we had forfeited all this by the wilful transgression and disobedience of the first Parents of mankind and were miserably bruised and maimed by their fall God of his infinite mercy was pleas'd to restore us to a new capacity of happiness by sending his only Son to suffer in our nature and in our stead and thereby to become a Propitiation for the sins of the whole World and the Author of eternal Salvation to them that believe and obey him And he hath likewise promised to give us his Holy Spirit to enable us to that Faith and Obedience which the Gospel requires of us as the necessary conditions of our eternal Salvation Thirdly God is also a firm and unchangeable Good Notwithstanding his infinite Wisdom and Power and Goodness we might be miserable if God were mutable For that cannot be a happiness which depends upon uncertainties and perhaps one of the greatest aggravations of misery is to fall from happiness to have been once happy and afterwards to cease to be so And that would unavoidably happen to us if the cause
of our happiness could change and the foundation of it be removed If God could be otherwise than powerful and wise and good all our hopes of happiness would be shaken and would fall to the ground But the Divine nature is not subject to any change As he is the Father of lights and the Author of every good and perfect gift so with him is no variableness neither shadow of turning All the things of this World are mutable and for that reason had they no other imperfection belonging to them cannot make us happy Fourthly God is such a good as none can deprive us of and take away from us If the things of this World were unchangeable in their nature and not liable to any decay yet they cannot make us happy because we may be cheated of them by fraud or robb'd of them by violence But God cannot be taken from us Nothing but our Sins can part God and us Who shall separate us saith the Apostle from the love of God shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword We may be stripp'd of all our worldly comforts and enjoyments by the violence of men but none of all these can separate us from God I am persuaded as the Apostle goes on with great triumph that neither death nor life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor heighth nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor any other Creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nor any other Creature Here is a sufficient induction of particulars and nothing left out of this Catalogue but one and that is Sin which is none of God's Creatures but our own This indeed deliberately consented to and wilfully continued in will finally part God and us and for ever hinder us from being happy But if we be careful to avoid this which only can separate between God and us nothing can deprive us of Him The aids and influences of his Grace none can intercept and hinder the joyes and comforts of his Holy Spirit none can take from us All other things may leave us and forsake us We may be debarr'd of our best friends and banish'd from all our acquaintance but men can send us no whither from the presence of God Our Communication with Heaven cannot be prevented or interrupted Our Prayers and our Souls will always find the way thither from the uttermost parts of the Earth Fifthly God is an Eternal God And nothing but what is so can make us happy Man having an immortal Spirit and being design'd for an endless duration must have a happiness proportionable For which reason nothing in this World can make us happy because we shall abide and remain after it When a very few years are past and gone and much sooner for any thing we know all the things of this World will leave us or else we shall be taken away from them But God is from everlasting to everlasting He is the same and his years faile not Therefore well might David fix his happiness upon God alone and say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth that I desire besides thee When my heart faileth and my strength faileth God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever Sixthly God is able to support and comfort us in every condition and under all the accidents and adversities of human Life Outward afflictions may hurt our Body but they cannot reach our Soule and so long as that remains unwounded the spirit of a man can bear his infirmities God is intimate to our Soules and hath secret wayes whereby to convey the joyes and comforts of his Holy Spirit into our hearts under the bitterest afflictions and sharpest sufferings He can enable us by his Grace to possess our soules in patience when all other things are taken from us When there is nothing but trouble about us He can give us peace and joy in believing When we are persecuted afflicted and tormented He can give us that ravishing sight of the Glories of another World that stedfast assurance of a future Blessedness as shall quite extinguish all sense of present sufferings How did many of the primitive Christian Martyrs in the midst of their torments and under the very pangs of death rejoyce in the hope of the glory of God There are none of us but may happen to fall into those circumstances of danger and of bodily paines and sufferings as to have no hopes of relief and comfort but from God none in all the World to trust to but Him only And in the greatest Evils that can befall us in this life He is a sure refuge and sanctuary and to repeat the words of the Psalmist after the Text When our heart failes and our strength failes God is the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever Now what would any of us do in such a Case if it were not for God Human nature is liable to desperate straits and exigencies And he is not happy who is not provided against the worst that may happen It is sad to be reduced to such a condition as to be destitute of all comfort and hope And yet men may be brought to that extremity that if it were not for God they would not know which way to turn themselves or how to entertain their thoughts with any comfortable considerations under their present anguish All men naturally resort to God in extremity and cry out to him for help Even the most profane and Atheistical when they are destitute of all other comfort will run to God and take hold of him and cling about him But God hath no pleasure in fooles in those who neglect and despise him in their prosperity though they owe that also entirely to him but when the evil day comes then they lay hold of him as their only refuge When all things go well with them God is not in all their thoughts but in their affliction they will seek him early Then they will cry Lord Lord but he will say to them in that day depart from me ye workers of iniquity for I know you not Here will be the great unhappiness of such persons that God will then appear terrible to them so as they shall not be able when they look up to him to abide his frowns And at the same time that they are forc'd to acknowledge him and to supplicate to him for mercy and forgiveness they shall be ready to despair of it Then those terrible threatnings of Gods Word will come to their minds Because I called and yet refused I stretched out my hand and no man regarded But 〈◊〉 set at nought all my counsel and would have none of my reproof I also will laugh at your calamity and monk when your fear cometh when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distress and anguish cometh