sire, that he at last might discover the utter insufficiency of all created excellencies to quiet the soul of man. But if we will not believe the experience of Solomon, let us believe the authority of him that was greater then Solomon; who hath plainly compared the things and the cares of the earth to thorns, which, as the apostle' speaks, "pierce (or bore) a man through with many sorrows."

m

Sect. 35.-First, They are wounding thorns: for that which is but a prick in the flesh, is a wound in the spirit; because the spirit is most tender of smart and the Wise Man calls them vexation of spirit.' The apostle tells us, "They beget many sorrows, and those sorrows bring death with them.' If it were possible for a man to see in one view those oceans of blood, which have been let out of men's veins by this one thorn; to hear in one noise all the groans of those poor men, whose lives, from the beginning of the world unto these days of blood wherein we live, have been set at sale, and sacrificed to the unsatiable ambition of their bloody rulers; to see and hear the endless remorse and bitter yellings of so many rich and mighty men as are now in Hell, everlastingly cursing the deceit and murder of these earthly creatures; it would easily make every man with pity and amazement to believe, that the creatures, of themselves, without Christ to qualify their venom and to blunt their edge, are, in good earnest, wounding thorns.

Sect. 36.-Secondly, They are choking thorns: they stifle and keep down all the gracious seeds of the Word, yea the very natural sproutings of nobleness, ingenuity, morality in the dispositions of men. Seed requires emptiness in the ground, that there may be a free admission of the rain and influences of the heavens to cherish it: and so the Gospel requires nakedness and poverty of mind, a sense of our own utter insufficiency to ourselves for happiness, in which sense it is said, that 'The poor receive the gospel.' But now earthly things, meeting with corruption in the heart, are very apt first, to fill it, and secondly, to swell it; both which are conditions contrary to the preparations of the gospel.

Sect. 37.-They fill the heart, first, with business". Yokes of oxen, and farms, and wives, and the like content

* Math. xiii. 22. 11 Tim. vi. 10. m 2 Cor. vii. 10.

Luk. xiv. 18. 20.

ments take up the studies and delights of men, that they cannot find out any leisure to come to Christ.

Secondly, They fill the heart with love, and "the love of the world shuts out the love of the Father," as the apostle speaks. When the heart goes after covetousness, the power and obedience of the Word is shut quite out. "They will not do thy words," saith the Lord to the prophet P, "for their heart goeth after their covetousness." A dear and superlative love, such as the gospel ever requires (for a man must love Christ upon such terms, as to be ready, without consultation or demur, not to forsake only, but to hate father and mother and wife, and any the choicest worldly endearments for his gospel sake,)-I say, such a love admits of no corrivality or competition. And therefore the love of the world must needs extinguish the love of the Word.

Lastly, They fill the heart with fear of foregoing them; and fear takes off the heart from any thoughts, save those which look upon the matter of our fear. When men, who make gold their confidence, hear that they must forsake all for Christ, and are sometime haply put upon a trial; they start aside, choose rather securely to enjoy what they have present hold of, than venture the interruption of their carnal contentments for such things, the beauty whereof the prince of this world hath blinded their eyes that they should not see. For certainly, till the mind be settled to believe, that in God there is an ample recompense for any thing, which we may otherwise forego for him; it is impossible that a man should soundly embrace the love of the truth, or renounce the love of the world.

Sect. 38. Secondly, As they fill, so they swell the heart too, and by that means work in it a contempt and disestimation of the simplicity of the gospel. We have both together in the prophet, "According to their pasture, so were they filled: they were filled, and their heart was exalted: therefore have they forgotten me." Now the immediate child of pride is self-dependence and a reflection on our own sufficiency; and from thence the next issue is, a contempt of the simplicity of that gospel, which should drive us out of ourselves. The Gentiles, out of the pride of their own

1 Joh. ii. 15. P Ezek. xxxiii.

Hos. xiii. 6.

r Psal. x. 4.

wisdom, counted the gospel of Christ foolishness, and mocked those that preached it unto them: and the Pharisees, who were the learned doctors of Jerusalem, when they heard Christ preach against earthly affections, out of their pride and covetousness' derided him,' as the Evangelist" speaks. Nay farther, they stifle the seeds of all nobleness, ingenuity, or common virtues in the lives of men: - from whence come oppression, extortion, bribery, cruelty, rapine, fraud, injurious, treacherous, sordid, ignoble courses, a very dissolution of the laws of nature among men, but from the adoration of earthly things, from that idol of covetousness which is set up in the heart?

Thirdly, They are deceitful thorns,' as our Saviour expresseth it. Let a man in a tempest go to a thorn for shelter; and he shall light upon a thief instead of a fence, which will tear his flesh instead of succouring him, and do him more injury than the evil which he fled from. And such are the creatures of themselves; so far are they from protecting, that indeed they tempt and betray us. "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clifts of the rocks, thou that sayest in thine heart, Who shall bring me down? I will bring thee down," saith the Lord to Edom *.

Sect. 39.-Lastly, They are vanishing thorns: nothing so apt, nothing so easy to catch fire, and be presently extinguished. They are "quenched like a fire of thorns." y

To consider yet more distinctly the vexation of the creature, we will observe, first, the degrees; secondly, the grounds of it; and thirdly, the uses which we should put it to.

Five degrees, we shall observe of this vexation.

Sect. 40.-First, The creatures are apt to molest the Spirit in the procuring of them, even as thorns will certainly prick in their gathering. They make "all a man's days sorrow and his travel grief, they suffer not his heart to take rest in the night;" as the Wise Man' speaks. What pains will men take, what hazards will they run, to procure their desires!

1 Cor. i. 23.

t Acts xvii. 32.

u Luke xvi. 14.

* Obad. ver. 3. 4. Habak. ii. 9, 10. Ezek. xxviii. 17. Zeph. ii. 15. y Psal. lviii. 9. Psal. cxviii. 12. * Eccles. ii. 22. 23.

Pains of body; plotting of brain; conflicts of passions; biting of conscience; dis-reputation amongst men; scourge of tongues; any thing, every thing, will men adventure, to obtain at last that which, it may be, is not a competent reward for the smallest of these vexations.' How will men exchange their salvation; throw away their own mercy; make themselves perpetual drudges and servitors to the times; fawn, flatter, comply; couple in with the instruments or authors of their hopes; hazard their own blood in desperate undertakings, and stain their consciences with the blood of others, to swim through all to their adored Heaven! "Adorare vulgus, jacere oscula, et omnia serviliter pro imperio:" the historian spake it of Otho, that Roman Absalom; he worshipped the people; dispensed frequently his courtesies and plausibilities; crouched and accommodated himself to the basest routs, that thereby he might creep into an usurped honour, and get himself a hated memory in after-ages. And that the like vexation is ordinary in the procurement of any earthly things, will easily appear, if we but compare the disposition of the mind with the obstacles, that meet us in the pursuit of them. Suppose we a man importunately set to travel unto some place, where the certainty of some great profit or preferment attends his coming: the way through which he must go, is intricate, deep, unpassable; the beast that carries him, lame and tired; his acquaintance none, his instructions few; what a heavy vexation must this needs be to the soul of that man to be crossed with so many difficulties in so eager a desire! Just this is the case with natural men in the prosecution of earthly things. First, the desires of men are very violent; which the scripture useth to express by "making haste, greedy coveting, a purpose to be rich: "Qui dives fieri vult, et citò vult fieri:' they that will be rich, cannot be quiet till their desires are accomplished: and therefore we find strong desires in the scripture-phrase expressed by such things, as give intimation of pain with them. The apostle describes them by 'groaning and sighing:' the prophet David, by 'panting and gasping:' the spouse in the Canticles, by sickness, I am sick with love.'

Tacit. Hist. 1. 1. 36. d Rom. viii. 23. 26.

b

g

Thus Amnon grew lean for the desire of his sister, and was vexed and sick: thus Ahab waxed heavy, and laid him down on his bed, and turned away his face, and would not eat because of Naboth's vineyard. So that very importunity of desires is full of vexation in itself. But besides, the means for fulfilling these desires are very difficult, the instruments very weak and impotent. Peradventure, a man's wits are not suitable to his desires, or his strength not to his wits, or his stock not to his strength; his friends few, his corrivals many; his business tough and intricate; his counsels uncertain; his projects waylaid and prevented; his contrivances dashed and disappointed; such a circumstance unseen, such a casualty starting suddenly out, such an occurrence meeting the action, hath made it unfeasible, and shipwrecked the expectation. A man deals with the earth, he finds it weak and languid; every foot of that must oftentimes lie fallow, when his desires do still plough: with men, he finds their hearts hard, and their hands close: with servants, he finds them slow and unfaithful with trading, he finds the time hard, the world at a stand, every man too thrifty to deal much, and too crafty to be deceived: so that now that vexation, which was at first begun with vehemency of desire,' is mightily improved with impatiency of opposition;' and, lastly, much increased with the fear of utter disappointment' at last. For according as the desires are either more urgent or more difficult, so will the fears of their miscarriage grow and it is a miserable thing for the mind to be torn asunder between two such violent passions, as desire and fear.

Sect. 41.The second degree of vexation is, in the mul tiplying of the creature that men may have it to look upon with their eyes, and to worship it in their affections. And, in this case, the more the heap grows, the more the heart is enlarged unto it; and impossible it is, that that desire should ever be quieted, which grows by the fruition of the thing desired. A wolf that bath once tasted blood, is more fierce in the desire of it than he was before; experience puts an edge upon the appetite and so it is in the desires of men; they grow more savage and raging in the second or third pro

2 Sam. xiii. 2. h1 Kings xxi. 4.