la6 THE SAINT'S REST IS NOT tures afford, waxes old, and abates after a short en- joyment. If God should rain down angels' food, we should soon loathe the manna. If novelty support . not, our delights on earth grow dull. All creatures are to us, as the flowers to the bee ; there is but lit- tle honey on any one, and therefore there must be a superficial taste, and so to the next. The more the creature is known, the less it satisfieth. Those only are taken with it, who ,see no further than its out- ward' beauty, without discerning its inward vanity. When we thoroughly know the condition of other men, and have discovered the evil as well as the good, and the defects as well as the perfections, we then cease our admiration. 16. (6) To have creatures and means without God, is an aggravation of our misery. yIf God should say, Take my creatures, my word, my servants, my ordinances, but not myself;" would you take this for happiness? If you had the word of .God, and not the Word which is God; or the bread of the Lord, and not the Lord, which is the true bread; or could cry with the Jews, The temple of the Lord, and had not the Lord of the temple ; this were a poor happiness. Was Capernaum the more happy, or the more miserable, for seeing the mighty works which they had seen, and hearing the works of Christ which they did hear ? Surely that which aggravates our sin and misery cannot be our rest. § 17. (7) To confirm all this, let us consult our own and others' experience. Millions have made trial; but did any ever find a sufficient rest for his soul on earth ? Delights I deny not but they have found, but rest and satisfaction they never found. And shall we think to find that which never man could find before us? Ahab's kingdom is nothing 'to him without Naboth's vineyard ; and did that satisfy him when he obtained it ? 'Were you, like Noah's dove, to look through the earth for a rest- ing place, you would return confessing that you could find none, Go ask honour, is there rest here?
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