OF Sï'IRITUAL YVIÍNDEDNESS. 231 the mean time, have more than they know what to do with, Who would set his heart and affections on those things which God poureth into the bosoms of the vilest men, to be a snare to them here, and an aggra- vation of their condemnation for ever ? It seems, you may go and take the world, and take the curse, death and hell, along with it; and what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? What can any mando on the consideration hereof, who will not forego all his hopes and expectations from God, but retreat to the faith of things spiritual and eternal, as containing an excellency in them incomparably above all that may be enjoyed here below l Fourthly. He doth continue to give perpetual instan- ces of their uncertainty and unsatisfactoriness, in the utter disappointment of men that have had expecta- tions from them. The ways hereof are various, and the instances so multiplied, as that most men in the world, unless they are like the fool in the gospel, who bade his soul take its ease for many years, because his barns were full, live in perpetual fears and apprehen- sions, that they, shall speedily lose whatever they en- joy; or, are under the power of a stupid security. But as to this consideration . of them, there is such an ac- count given by the wise man, as to which nothing can be added, or which no reason or experience is able to contradict. Eccl. ii. By these and the like ways, doth God cast contempt on all thins here below; discov- ering the folly and falseness of the promises which the world makes use of to allure our affections to itself. This, therefore, is to be laid as the foundation in all our considerations, to what or whom we shall cleave by our affections, that God hath not only de- clared the insufficiency of these things to give us that
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