a dream Isa 29.8 As an hungry man that dreams he is at a furnisht Table and fills himself with all varieties of Delicates how joyful and how pleas'd is he how fully satisfied if he were not to wake again But some one jogs or calls him he wakes and finds himself hunger-starv'd nothing fed but his phancy So is it with us in this world While the Soul lies under the coverlet of this body it sleeps And one thinks himself rich another great and noble a third learned and wise But alas All this is onely a dream When either Afflictions or Death make a noise and call upon him the sleepy soul awakes and finds it self empty and hunger-starv'd after all the imaginary store it enjoyed Now the Unsatisfactoriness of the World may be clearly evinced by these two things First In that the highest condition we can attain unto cannot free us from cares and crosses Yea indeed it is so far from freeing us that it rather encreaseth them It doth but make us spread the wider and stand the fairer mark for trouble And yet we are like Children that think the Skie lies on yonder Hill thither they run hoping to touch it there When they come they find it dislodg'd to another Hill after it they run and pursue it from hill to hill and after all their pains and sweat find themselves as far below it as at first So it fares with us We think happiness and true content lies in some condition above us Thither we hasten hoping we shall reach it there When we arrive thither we find the happiness we sought for is dislodg'd and seems to us to rest in a condition above that But when we attain this too still we are as far below happiness and satisfaction as we were in our lowest estate When we change our outward condition be it to never so great advantage we do not lose but onely change our cares If we are freed from the cares and crosses of a poor and private life we fall into those of a pompous and envied greatness which are both more numerous and more oppressive a Angustanda sunt patrimonia ut miâ—ùs ad injurias fortunae simus expositi Habiliora sunt corpora in bello quae in armâ— sua contrahi possunt quà m quae supeâ—funduntur undique magnitudo sua vulaâ—ribus objecit Sen. de tâ—â—â—que c. 8. Cogendae iâ—dictum res sunt ut telum in vanum â—adant Id. c. 9. The man that lies most compacted and in least compass in the world is like to scape best Whereas the great ones that take up much room do onely shew in how many places and concernments they are lyable to be wounded It is not therefore any thing in this world that can give you satisfaction All the enjoyments of it are to the soul as wind to the stomach they may gripe it but they can never satisfie it Indeed so vain are they that they scarce have any other proof of their reality but the pain and torment they bring with them Secondly The world appears to be unsatisfactory in that be our condition what it will yet still we desire change We can no more rest in an high estate than in a low but still we desire something further and something better b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plut. de â—runquil Aâ—â—â— As sick men tosse to and fro from side to side thinking to find ease by changing their posture whereas it is not their outward posture but their inward distemper that is the cause of their restlesseness So do we endeavour to change and shift conditions in the world and ly sometimes in one posture and sometimes in another but yet are restless in all for wheresoere we tumble we carry our disease with us false opinions and foolish hopes and impotent desires and fond designes which make us complain of our present state and wish the amendment of that when nothing wants cure but our selves c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Plut. Ib. The Servant thinks he shall be a happy man when he is made free Is the freeman happy No but he shall be when he hath gotten such an estate Is the rich man happy No but he shall be when he is invested with such an honour and dignity Well Is the honourable man happy No unless he be supream And those who are supreme cannot think themselves compleatly happy unless they be Universal Monarchs And those who were so we find they could not rest there but would needs be adored for Gods Oh whither do the boundless desires of men hurry them Nothing in this world can put a stop to them Plut. in viâ—â Pyrâ—â— It was a pertinent discourse of Cineas diswading Pyrrhus from undertaking a war against the Romans Sir saith he when you have conquer'd them what will you do next Then Sicily is near at hand and easie to master And what when you have subdued Sicily Then we 'll pass over to Africk and take Carthage which cannot long withstand us When these are conquer'd what will be your next attempt Then saith Pyrrhus we 'll fall in upon Greece and Macedon and recover what we have lost there Well when all are subdued what fruit do you expect from all your Victories Then saith he we 'll sit down and enjoy our selves Sir replies Cineas May we not do it now Have you not already a Kingdom of your own And he that cannot enjoy himself with a Kingdom cannot with the whole World Such are the designes of men and so we may answer them Most are projecting how they may get such an estate then how they may raise themselves to honour and think that their advancement in both will bring them satisfaction Alas This will not do Their desires will still run before them And they may as well sit down content where they are as where they hope to be And the reason of this unsatisfactoriness in worldly things is because none of them are so good as the soul is The Soul next to Angels is the very top and cream of the whole Creation other things are but Dregs and Lees compared to it Now that which is our happiness must be better than our selves for it must perfect us But these things being far worse and inferiour the soul in cleaving to them is secretly conscious that it abaseth and disparageth it self and therefore cannot find true satisfaction Nothing can fill the soul but that which eminently contains in it all good But now as light is onely divided and parcel'd out among the Stars but is all united in the Sun So goodness is onely parcel'd out among the Creatures this Creature hath one share and that another not any of them contains the whole sum of goodness This is proper to God onely who is the Author and original of them all in whom all excellencies and perfections are concentred And therefore in him alone can be found that rest and satisfaction which the soul
ordinary And so they either tire our appetites or deceive our hopes And therefore the most artificial Voluptuaries have always allowed themselves an intermission in their pleasures to recruit nature and sharpen their sensual desires without which they would but cloy and surfet and instead of pleasures prove onely a wast and oppression to the spirits c Certos haâ—â—bâ—â—ates ipse magister voluptatis Epicurus quibus malignè fâ—mem extingueret Sen. Ep. 18 Ep. ad Menoeceum apud Diog. Lacit in vitâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epicurus himself the great Master and Servant of pleasure who made it the highest good and chiefest happiness of man set himself certain dayes of abstinence in course wherein he would but niggardly satisfie his stomach well knowing that the pleasure of gluttony could never be so much chanc'd as by an intervall of hunger For what is a furnisht Table to him whose constant meals overtake one another but onely the heaping of food upon crudities and indigestion What are titles of Honour to a person born noble They signifie no more to him than it doth to another man when he hears himself called by his ordinary name What is respect and honour to a man long accustomed to it It brings him no great content when he hath it but torments him when he fails of it Give these things to those that are unacquainted with them if you would have them valued Bring a poor man to a table of Delicates invest an ignoble person with Honours and Dignities give respect to a despised person and for the present you bless them But time and custome will wear off this content And the b Sunt talisiqunqueâ—aelia vitae Magna Voluptates commâ—ndat rarior usus Juv. Saâ— 11. tediousness even of such a life as this will make them willing at least for their divertisement and recreation to c Non existimâ—s me ducere te ad modices canas paupâ—ram cellâ—s quicquid aliud est per quod laxuriae divitiarum taedio ludiâ— Sâ—n. Ep. 1â— retire to their homely Cells and Station For as it is with those that are accustomed to strong perfumes they themselves cannot scent those odours which to others that use them not are most sweet and fragrant So it fares with us in the long continuance of worldly enjoyments our senses are so stufft and even suffocated with them that we cannot perceive them and unless we purchase pleasures by alternate sorrow they are but lost upon us Now how vain must the world needs be whose comforts are not valuable while we have them but while we have them not And how vain are those joys for which we must pay down as much grief as the joys themselves are worth So that upon ballancing the accompt there remains nothing to us And it had been altogether as good to have enjoyed nothing Again Consider all the pleasure of the world is nothing else but a tedious repetition of the same things Our life consists in a c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aâ—â—â— â— l 2. S. 12. round of Actions and what can be duller than still to be doing the same things over and over again Ask the most frollick Gallant whose onely study it is how he may pass his time merrily and live happily What account can he give of his pleasures but that from his Bed he riseth to his Table from his Table to his Sports from them he tumbles into his Bed again This is the most gentile and fashionable life And are these the great joyes that a world so prized and so admired can afford One half of his pleasant life he spends in sleep a dull state which we may rather reckon to death than life The other half he spends in clogging his appetite and tiring his body and then to sleep again What generous and noble designes are these Fit for high spirits and high births while the contemptible Peasants are left to do the drudgery of the world and to be the onely serviceable men in it Nay rather what a pittiful Circle is this still to be doing the same things and things which we have before searcht and often found all that is in them So that even a Heathen a Cogita quamdiu eadem facias Cibus somaus libido Mori velle non tantum prudens sortis aut miser sed etiam fastidiosus potest Sen. Ep. 77. could say that not onely a valiant or a miserable man might desire to die but a nice and delicate man as disdaining the irksome repetition of the same things Seventhly The Vanity of the World appears in this that it can stand us in no stead then when we have the greatest need of support and comfort There be two seasons especially in which the soul wants relief and comfort and they are in trouble of Conscience and at the hour of death Now in each of these the world shews it self to be exceeding vain and useless First The World appears to be vain when we are under trouble of Conscience What choice comforts the soul then stands in need of those who have felt the sting and terrours of it can best tell The torments they then feel next to those of the damned are the most intolerable and the most unutterable God sets them up as his mark and shoots his Arrows dipt in flaming poyson into the very midst of their souls He kindles a secret fire in them that consumes their bones dries up their marrow and scorches their entrals and such is the spreading rage of it that oftentimes it smoaks out at their mouths in despairing outcrys The spirit of a man saith Solomon Prov. 18.14 will bear his infirmity i. e. The natural chearfulness and vivacity of a mans spirit will inable him to bear up under bodily pains but a wounded spirit who can bear When our Prop it self is broken we must needs sink fall under the most gloomy apprehensions that Guilt and Hell can create in a soul already sing'd with those Eternal flames into which with unspeakable horror it dayly expects to be plunged Oh! think what exact torture thou must needs endure when God shall make deep wounds in thy spirit and let fall great drops of his burning wrath on that part of thy soul that is infinitely more tender and sensible than the apple of thine eye Imagine what sharp and intolerable pains those Martyrs sustained who as the Apostle tells us Heb. 11.37 were sawn asunder Or suppose that thou thy self wert now under the tagged teeth of a Saw drawn to and fro upon the tendrest parts of thy body tearing thy flesh thy nerves and sinews grating and jarring upon thy very bones Yet all the extremity of this is nothing to what torments the Conscience feels when God causeth his Sword to enter into it to rive it up when he makes deep and bloody wounds in it and instead of pouring in healing balm with an heavy hand chafes them with fire and brimstone Now in such
a time of anguish and distress as this what is there that can relieve the afflicted soul The worldling that heaps up his ill-gotten treasures and wallows in thick clay when God comes to ransack his conscience and to set before him the guilt of his sins will then know with terrour and amazement that there is a Justice which Gold and Silver cannot bribe The voluptuous person will no longer relish any savouriness in his carnal delights when once God a Job 13.26 writes bitter things against him What is mirth and musick to him that can now hear nothing but the screiches of his own conscience What is a full cup to him that can now taste nothing but the cup of fury and trembling Little content will the Noble take in his honourable Titles if all this while his Conscience call him Reprobate A Title of Honour will no more abate the torments of Conscience than it doth mitigate Belzebubs torments to be stiled Prince of the Devils All the worlds hony will not serve to allay the invenomed stingings of Conscience That 's a fiery Serpent a deaf Adder that will not be charm'd by all the alluring pleasures of the world These are vain and impertinent to one whose thoughts are wholly possest with the fear of Wrath and Hell from which these cannot deliver him When God makes a wound in the spirit the whole world cannot make a Plaister broad enough to cover it Secondly The world is a vain and useless thing at the hour of death Possibly many of us may never conflict with the terrors of Conscience nor have that conviction of the worlds Vanity But yet we must all conflict with death that King of terrors Suppose therefore what must certainly once be that we were now gasping our last our tongues faltering our eyestrings breaking our limbs quivering a dead cold and stiffness invading us were our souls tost to and fro upon our expiring breath and like wrecks at Sea sometimes cast up and by and by suckt back again what could stand us in stead and make our passage happy at such a time as this Now the soul requires the strongest the richest Cordials Prepare it one mingled of the best Ingredients the whole world can afford Cast into the Cup Riches Honour Pleasure the Quintessence of all that is here desirable yet alass What is all this world to a dying man who is just leaving it Thy wicked companions with whom thou hast laught and fin'd away thy freshest years will in this thy last extremity forsake thee or if they do attend so sad a spectacle alass What miserable comforters will they be They will then prove another bad conscience to thee and bring to thy remembrance with horror the sins which thou hast committed by their enticement or they by thine Thy mirth and jollity will then be turned into groans and howlings All things will stare ruthfully upon thee and when thou callest upon them for help Non domus fundus non aeâ—is acervus turi Aegroto domini deduxit corpore febris Non animo curas Hocat Ep. 2. confess their impotency to rescue thee from the gripe of death and from the doom of Justice Sickness is usually a busie time with conscience and when it is packing up for a remove into the other world it will be sure to gather together all the sins of a mans life and bind them as an heavy and insupportable burden upon his soul Can thy sensual pleasures divert thee now As they have served thee to pass away the tediousness of time can they serve to pass away the infinite tediousness of Eternity Nay how can it otherwise be but that a mind long soak't and softned by these should be made the more capable of receiving deep impressions of grief anguish and despair Indeed while we eagerly pursue any of these worldly enjoyments we are but running after a shadow And as shadows vanish and are swallowed up in the greater shade of night so when the night of Death shall cast its thick shade about us and wrap us up in deep and substantial darkness all these vain shadows will then disappear and vanish quite out of sight Now could we have the same opinion of the world in the time of our health and prosperity as we shall certainly have when we lie languishing and drawing on to Eternity we should be able then with a generous scorn to live above it and despise it Shall we prize those comforts which will be none to us when we have the greatest need of comfort Shall we glue our affections to that which either is so faithless that it will not or so weak that it cannot help us So vain a thing is it that it cannot resist the disgrace that sleep or onely winking doth it Shut but your eyes and what becomes of all the pomp and lustre the beauty and splendour that we so much admire in the world It all vanisheth into darkness and nothing Sleep snatcheth us from it and for the time we have no more enjoyment of it than if we were dead Every night we die in our beds and yet every day are so immerst in the pleasures and businesses of the world as if we were never to die indeed Since therefore we have higher and nobler objects to fix our affections on let us not lavish them out upon these worldly Vanities which can at no time prove real comforts unto us and then least of all when we have most need of comfort That 's a seventh Demonstration Again All things in the World are vain because they are unsuitable True indeed they are suited to the necessities of the Body and serve to feed and cloath that but He is a Beast or worse that reckons himself provided for when onely his bodily wants are supplied Have we not all of us precious and immortal souls capable and desirous of happiness Do not these crave to be satisfied Do they not deserve to be heard Shall our vile bodies which are but dust and worms-meat engross all our care how to please and pamper them and shall the necessities of our never dying souls be neglected What have you laid up in store for these Alas That which most men busie themselves about is to heap up temporal riches To joyn house to house Isa 5.8 and land to land that they might dwell alone upon the Earth But know thou dost but give thy soul husks and swines-meat when thou fettest the whole world before it And therefore our Saviour justly brands the rich man in the Gospel for a fool that when he had stuft up his barns with Corn said to his soul * Luke 12.19 Soul thou hast much Goods laid up for many years A fool indeed to measure the souls goods by the Barn or by the Bushel The very same is the folly of most men who think they are in all respects well provided for if they can but scrape together a great estate whereas the soul
can no more live upon these things than the body can upon a thought or notion There is a threefold unsuitableness between worldly things and the soul First The soul is spiritual these are drossie and material Of all things belonging to a man his breath is the most subtile invisible and spiritual But now the soul is called the * Gen. 2.7 Breath of God and therefore must needs be spiritual in a high degree And what then hath a spiritual soul to do with clods of Earth or acres of Land with Barns full of Corn or Bags full of Gold These are too thick and gross to correspond with its refined nature But rather bring spiritual things to Spiritual God who is the * Heb. 12.9 Father of Spirits his love and favour an interest in him and communion with him the consolations of the Holy Ghost the actings of Grace and the hopes of Glory these spiritual and clarified Essences which a carnal eye cannot see nor a carnal judgment value these are most suitable to the soul that is a Spirit and ought not to be unequaly yoak't to the dregs and dross of earthly enjoyments Secondly The soul is immortal but all worldly things are perishing and wear out in the using And therefore it was but small comfort when the rich man sung his Requiem to say Soul take thy ease thou hast Goods laid up for many years Thou fool What is an estate for many years to a soul whose duration is not measured by years but by Eternity What when those years of plenty are expired How destitute will thy soul be when it shall have out lived all its good things It may out-live them even in this world God may nip and blast all that thou settest thy heart on and make all thy comforts fall off from thee like so many withered leaves However if thou hast no other than what this miserable world can afford thou shalt certainly out-live them in the world to come And what wilt thou do not in those years but in that Eternity of Famine As it is with those that are invited to feast in some noble Family the Furniture is rich the Entertainment splendid and magnificent but when they depart they cannot of all that pomp and bravery carry any thing away with them So is it here the world is Gods great House richly furnisht and we well entertain'd in it we have all things liberally afforded us for our use but nothing of all is ours And therefore God hath set that grim Porter Death at his Gate to see that as we brought nothing into it so we carry nothing out of it What a sad parting hour will it be to the soul when it must go into another world and leave all that it admired and loved behind in this How will it protract and linger How loath will it be to enter upon so great a journey and carry nothing to defray the charges of it Certainly dying must needs be a terrible thing to those who have gotten nothing but what they can no longer keep when their souls must be set on shore in a vast and black Eternity all naked and destitute having nothing to releive or support them Thirdly The necessities of the soul are altogether of another kind than those which worldly things are able to supply and therefore they are wholly unsuitable Natural things may well serve for natural wants Food will satisfie hunger and Rayment fence off the injuries of the weather and Riches will procure both But the souls necessities are spiritual and these no Natural thing can reach It wants a price to redeem it nothing can do this but the pretious Blood of Christ It wants pardon and forgiveness nothing can grant it but the free and abundant mercy of God It wants Sanctification and Holiness Comfort and Assurance nothing can effect these but the Holy Ghost Here all worldly things fall short The Exigencies of the outward man they may supply but the greatest abundance of them can never quiet a troubled Conscience nor appease an angry God nor remove the condemning guilt of the least sin No Psal 49.8 The redemption of the soul is pretious more pretious than to be purchased by these poor things and it ceaseth for ever Possibly now in the time of your peace and prosperity you regard not these spiritual wants but when the dayes of sorrow and darkness shall come upon you when God shall drop into your Consciences a little of his wrath and displeasure you may as well seek to cure a wound in your body by applying a plaister to your garment as seek to ease a wounded Spirit by all the Treasures Pleasures and Enjoyments of this world Prov. 11.4 Riches saith the wise man profit not in the day of wrath For indeed they cannot reach the soul to bring any true solace to it Thus you see how unsuitable the World is to the Soul Unsuitable to the Nature of it for the Soul is spiritual but all earthly enjoyments are drossie and material the soul is immortal but these are all perishing Unsuitable also to the necessities of the soul which they can never reach nor supply Again The Vanity of the World appears in its Inconstancy and Fickleness Gods Providence administers all things here below in perpetual vicissitudes His Hand turns them about like so many wheels to which they are compared Ezek. 1. the same part is now uppermost and anon lowermost now lifted up in the Air and by and by grated through the mire This is the mutable condition of the world And therefore we find it compared to the Moon Rev. 12.1 where the Church is described to be Cloathed with the Sun and to have the Moon that is the World under her seâ—t And well may it bear the resemblance for it is still waxing and waning sometimes full of brightness at other times scarce a small streak of light to be discerned There are none of us but have had experience in some kind or other of the inconstancy of these sublunary enjoyments When the Sun shines bright and warm all the flowers of the Field open and display their leaves to receive him into their bosomes but when night comes they fold together and shut up all their glories And though they were like so many little Suns shining here below able one would think to force a day for themselves yet when the Sun withdraws his Beams they droop and hang the head and stand neglected dull and obscure things So hath it fared with us While God hath shone upon us with warm and cherishing influences we opened and spread and flourisht into a great pomp and glory But he onely hides his Face draws in his Beams and all our beautiful leaves shut up or fall to the ground and leave us a bare stalk poor and contemptible Or if there have been no such considerable mutations in what concerns us yet the revolutions that God hath of late years brought upon others so