130 FOURTH SERMON or to sit down in this throne, he bath therefore always blasted the policies and attempts of such as aspired unto such an absoluteness and independency,. making them know in the end that they are but men, Psa. ix. 19, 20. and that the Most High ruleth over all : and that it is an enterprise more full of folly than it is of pride for any creature to work its own safety and felicity out of itself. And as men usually are most vigilant upon their immediate interests, and most jealous and active against all encroachments thereupon ; so we shall ever find that God doth single out no men to be such notable monuments of his justice and their own ruin and folly, as those who have vied with him in the points of power, wisdom, and other divine prerogatives, aspiring unto that abso- luteness, self- sufficiency, self - interest, and indepen- dency which belongeth only unto him. And as he hath by the destruction of Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Herod, and divers others, taught us the madness of this ambition ; so doth he by our own daily preserva- tion teach us the same. For if God have appointed that we should go out of ourselves unto a thing below for a vital subsistence, to bread for food, to house for harbour, to clothes for warmth, &c. much more hath he appointed that we should go out of ourselves for a blessed and happy subsistence, by how much the more is required unto blessedness than unto life, and by how much the greater is our impotency unto the greatest and highest end. Yet so desperate is the aversion of sinful man from God, that when he is convinced of his impotency, and driven off from self - dependence, and reduced unto such extremities as should in reason lead him back unto God, yet when he hath no horses of his own to ride upon, no means of his own to escape evil, yet still
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