own goodness, the contriver of his own sufficiency; loth he is to go beyond himself, or what he thinks properly his own, for that in which he resolveth to place his rest. But, alas! after he had toiled out his heart, and wasted his spirits, in the most exact inventions that the creature could minister unto him; Solomon here, the most experienced for inquiry, the most wise for contrivance, the most wealthy for compassing such earthly delights, hath, after many years' sifting out the finest flour, and torturing nature to extract the most exquisite spirits and purest quintessence, which the varieties of the creatures could afford,—at last pronounced of them all, that they are vanity and vexation of spirit:' like thorns, in their gathering, they prick; that is their vexation: and in their burning, they suddenly blaze and waste away; that is their vanity. Vanity in their duration, frail and perishable things; and vexation in their enjoyment, they nothing but molest and disquiet the heart. "The eye," saith Solomon, "is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing." Notwithstanding they be the widest of all the senses, can take in more abundance with less satiety, and serve more immediately for the supplies of the reasonable soul; yet a man's eye-strings may even crack with vehemency of poring,—his ears may be filled with all the variety of the most exquisite sounds and harmonies and lectures in the world, and yet still his soul within him be as greedy to see and hear more, as it was at first. Who would have thought that the favour of a prince, the adoration of the people, the most conspicuous honours of the court, the liberty of utterly destroying his most bitter adversaries, the sway of the stern and universal negotiations of state, the concurrency of all the happiness that wealth, or honour, or intimateness with the prince, or deity with the people, or extremity of luxury, could afford,—would possibly have left any room or nook in the heart of Haman for discontent? And yet do but observe, how the want of one Jew's knee (who dares not give divine worship to any but his Lord) blasts all his other glories, brings a damp upon all his other delights, makes his head hang down and his mirth wither: so little leaven was able to squr all the queen's banquet and the king's favour. Ahab was a king, in whom therefore we may justly expect a confluence of all the happiness, which his dominions could afford; a man that

built whole cities, and dwelt in ivory palaces; and yet the want of one poor vineyard of Naboth brings such a heaviness of heart, such a deadness of countenance on so great a person, as seemed, in the judgment of Jezebel, far unbeseeming the honour and distance of a prince. Nay, Solomon, a man every way more a king both in the mind and in the state of a king than Ahab; a man that did not use the creature with a sensual, but with a critical fruition, "To find out that good which God had given men under the sun," and that in such abundance of all things, learning, honour, pleasure, peace, plenty, magnificence, foreign supplies, royal visits, noble confederacies, as that in him was the pattern of a complete prince, beyond all the platforms and ideas of Plato and Xenophon; even he was never able to repose his heart upon any, or all these things together, till he brings in the fear of the Lord for the close of all.

Lastly, look on the people of Israel: God had delivered them from a bitter thraldom, had divided the sea before them, and destroyed their enemies behind them; had given them bread from heaven, and fed them with angels' food; had commanded the rock to satisfy their thirst, and made the Canaanites to melt before them; his mercies were magnified with the power of his miracles, and his miracles crowned with the sweetness of his mercies; besides the assurance of great promises to be performed in the Holy Land: And yet, in the midst of all this, we find nothing but murmuring and repining: God had given them meat for their faith, but they must have meat for their lust too: it was not enough that God shewed them mercies, unless his mercies were dressed up, and fitted to their palate; "They tempted God, and limited the holy one of Israel," saith the Prophet. So infinitely unsatisfiable is the fleshly heart of man, either with mercies or miracles, that bring nothing but the creatures to it.

Sect. 5.-The ground whereof is, the vast disproportion which is between the creature and the soul of man; whereby it comes to pass, that it is absolutely impossible for one to fill up the other. The soul of man is a substance of unbounded desires: and that will easily appear, if we consider

d Psal. lxxviii. 41.

him in any estate, either created or corrupted. In his created estate, he was made with a soul capable of more glory than the whole earth, or all the frame of nature, though changed into one paradise, could have afforded him: for he was fitted unto so much honour, as an infinite and everlasting communion with God could bring along with it. And now God never in the creation gave unto any creature a proper capacity of a thing, unto which he did not withal implant such motions and desires in that creature as should be somewhat suitable to that capacity, and which might (if they had been preserved entire) have brought man to the fruition of that good which he desired. For notwithstanding it be true that the glory of God cannot be attained unto by the virtue of any action which man either can, or ever could have performed; yet God was pleased out of mercy, for the magnifying of his name, for the communicating of his glory, for the advancement of his creature, to enter into covenant with man: and, for his natural obedience, to promise him a supernatural reward. And this, I say, was even then out of mercy; inasmuch as Adam's legal obedience of works could no more, in any virtue of its own, but only in God's merciful contract and acceptance, merit everlasting life, than our evangelical obedience of faith can now. Only the difference between the mercy of the first and second covenant (and it is a great difference) is this: God did out of mercy propose salvation unto Adam, as an infinite reward of such a finite obedience as Adam was able, by his own created abilities, to have performed: as if a man should give a day-labourer an hundred pounds for his day's work, which perform indeed he did by his own strength, but yet did not merit the thousandth part of that wages which he receives. But God's mercy unto us is this, that he is pleased to bestow upon us, not only the reward, but the work and merit which procured the reward; that he is pleased in us to reward another man's work, even the work of Christ our head: as if when one only captain had, by his own wisdom, discomfited and defeated an enemy, the prince notwithstanding should reward his alone service with the advancement of the whole army which he led. But this by the way certain in the mean time it is, that God created man with such capacities and desires, as could not be limited

with any, or all the excellenoies of his fellow and finite

creatures.

Nay, look even upon corrupted nature; and yet there we shall still discover this restlessness of the mind of man, though in an evil way, to promote itself. Whence arise distractions of heart, thoughts for to-morrow, rovings and inquisitions of the soul after infinite varieties of earthly things, swarms of lust, sparkles of endless thoughts, those secret flowings, and ebbs, and tempests, and estuations of that sea of corruption in the heart of man,-but because it can never find any thing on which to rest, or that hath room enough to entertain so ample and so endless a guest? Let us then look a little into the particulars of that great disproportion and insufficiency of any, or all the creatures under the sun, to make up an adequate and suitable happiness for the soul of man.

Sect. 6.-Solomon here expresseth it in two words, "vanity and vexation." From the first of these, we may observe a threefold disproportion between the soul and the creatures. First, in regard of their nature and worth; they are base in When David would shew comparison of the soul of man. the infinite distance between God and man in power and strength, he expresseth the baseness of man by his vanity : to be laid in the balance, "They are altogether lighter than vanity." And surely if we weigh the soul of man, and all the creatures under the sun together, we shall find them lighter than vanity itself. All the goodness and honour of the creature ariseth from one of these two grounds; either from man's coining, or from God's; either from opinion imposed upon them by men, or from some real qualities which they have in their nature. Many things there are which have all that worth and estimation which they carry amongst men, not from their own qualities, but from human institution, or from some difficulties that attend them, or from some other outward imposition. When a man gives money for meat, we must not think there is any natural proportion of worth between a piece of silver and a piece of flesh; for that worth which is in the meat is its own, whereas that which is in the money is by human appointment. The like we may say for

• Psal. Ixii. 9.

great titles of honour and secular degrees: though they bring authority, distance, reverence with them from other men, yet notwithstanding they do not, of themselves, by any proper virtue of their own, put any solid and fundamental merit into the man himself. Honour is but the raising of the rate and value of a man; it carries nothing of substance necessarily along with it: as in raising the valuation of gold from twenty shillings to twenty-two, the matter is the same, only the estimation different. It is in the power of the king to raise a man out of prison, like Joseph, and give him the next place unto himself. Now this, then, is a plain argument of the great baseness of any of these things, in comparison of the soul of man, and, by consequence, of their great disability to satisfy the same: for can a man make any thing equal to himself? Can a man advance a piece of gold or silver into a reasonable, a spiritual, an eternal substance? A man may make himself like these things; he may debase himself into the vileness of an idol,-"They that make them, are like unto them;" he may undervalue and uncoin himself, blot out God's image and inscription, and write in the image and inscription of earth and Satan; he may turn himself"into brass, and iron, and reprobate silver," as the prophet speaks; but never can any man raise the creatures by all his estimations to the worth of a man. We cannot so much as change the colour of a hair, or add a cubit to our stature much less can we make any thing of equal worth with our whole selves. We read indeed of some which have sold the righteous, and that at no great rate neither, for "a pair of shoes," Joel iii. 6; Amos ii. 6; but we see there how much the Lord abhorred that detestable fact, and recompensed it upon the neck of the oppressors. How many men are there still, that set greater rates upon their own profits, or liberties, or preferments, or secular accommodations, than on the souls of men, whose perdition is oftentimes the price of their advancements? But yet still St. Paul's rule must hold, "For meat, destroy not the work of God;" for money, betray not the blood of Christ; destroy not him with thy meat, with thy dignities, with thy preferments, for whom Christ died. 'We were not redeemed

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f Rom. xiv. 15. 20.