512 CHARACTER Or A SOUND, usually persons whose weak and passionate nature dotfi occasion it some women, especially, that have strong fancies and passions, are always passionately affected with whatsoever they apprehend. And these are like a ship that is tossed in a tempest; that is one while lifted up as to the clouds, and presently cast down as into an infernal gulf; there one day in great joy, and quickly after in as great perplexity and sorrow, because their comforts or sorrows do follow their presentfeeling, or mutuable apprehensions. But when they come to be confirmed Christians, they will keep a more con- stant judgment of themselves, and their own condition, and con- stantly see their grounds of comfort; and when they Cannot raise their souls to any high and passionatejoys, they yet walk in a set- tled peace of soul, and in such competent comforts, as make their lives to be easy and delightful;; being well pleased and contented with the happy pondition that Christ bath brought them to, and thankful that he left them not in those foolish, vain, pernicious pleasures, which were the way to-endless sorrows. 3. But the seeming Christian seeketh and taketh up his chief contentment in some carnal thing : ifhe be so poor and miserable as to have nothing in possession that can much delight him, he will hope for better days hereafter, and that hope shall be his chief de- light ; or if he have no such hope, he will be without delight ; . and show his love to theworld and flesh, by mourning for that which, he cannot have as others do inrejoicing in what they do possess ; and he will, in such a desperate case of misery; be such to the world as the weak Christian is tó God, who bath a mourning and desiring love, when he cannot reach to an enjoying and delightful love. His carnal mind most savoreth the things of the fleshyand therefore in them he findeth or seeketh his delights. Though yet he may have also a delight in his superficial kind' of religion, his hearing, and reading, and praying, and in his ill-grounded hopes of . life eternal ; but all this is but subordinate to his chief, earthly pleasure ; " yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their. God : they ask of me the ordinances of justice ; they take delight in approaching unto God." Isa. lviii. 2. And yet all this was subjected to a covetous, oppressing mind. " He that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it, yet bath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while ; for when tribulation orpersecution ariseth be- cause of the word, by and by he is offended ; " Matt. xiii. 20. Whereby it appeareth that his love to the word was subjected to his love to the. world. Object. ' But there are two sorts of people that seem tohave no fleshly delights at all, and yet are not in the way to salvation, viz.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=