not! And how vain are those joys, for which we must pay down as much grief, as the joys themselves are worth! So that, upon ballancing the accompt, there remains nothing to us: and it had been altogether as good, to have enjoyed nothing.

6. Again, consider, ALL THE PLEASURE OF THE WORLD, IS

NOTHING ELSE BUT A TEDIOUS REPETITION OF THE SAME THINGS.

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Our life consists in a round of actions*: and what can be duller, than still to be doing the same things over and over again?

Ask the most frolic gallant, whose only study it is how he may pass his time merrily and live happily: what account can he give of his pleasures, but that from his bed he riseth to his table, from his table to his sports, from them he tumbles into his bed again? This is the most genteel and fashionable life.

And are these the great joys, that a world so prized and so admired can afford? One half of his pleasant life he spends in sleep, a dull state, which we may rather reckon to death than life. The other half he spends in clogging his appetite, and tiring his body, and then to sleep again. What generous and noble designs are these! Fit for high spirits and high births: while the contemptible peasants are left to do the drudgery of the world, and to be the only serviceable men in it. Nay, rather what a pitiful circle is this, still to be doing the same things, and things which we have before searched and often found all that is in them! So that even a heathen could say †, That not only a valiant or a miserable man might desire to die; but a nice and delicate man, as disdaining the irksome repetition of the same things."

7. The Vanity of the World appears in this, THAT IT CAN

STAND US IN NO STEAD, THEN WHEN WE HAVE THE GREATEST NEED OF SUPPORT AND COMFORT.

There be two seasons especially, in which the soul wants relief and comfort: and they are, in Trouble of Conscience, and at the Hour of Death. Now in each of these the world shews itself to be exceeding vain and useless.

(1.) The world appears to be vain, when we are under Trouble of Conscience.

* Παντα εξ αιδίου ὁμοειδη και ανακυκλούμενα· και ουδεν διαφέρει ποτερον εν ἑκατον ετεσιν, η εν διακοσιοις, η εν τω απερῳ χρόνῳ τα αυτα τις οψεται. Antonin. 1. ii. s. 14. ↑ Cogita quamdiu eadem facias: Cibus, somnus, libido. Mori velle, non tantùm prudens et fortis aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest. Sen. Ep. 77.

What choice comforts the soul then stands in need of, those, who have felt the sting and terrors of it, can best tell. The torments they then feel, next to those of the damned, are the most intolerable, and the most unutterable. God sets them up as his mark; and shoots his arrows, dipped in flaming poison, into the very midst of their souls. He kindles a secret fire in them, that consumes their bones, dries up their marrow, and scorches their entrails; and, such is the spreading rage of it, that oftentimes it smoaks out at their mouths in despairing outcries.

The spirit of a man, saith Solomon, Prov. xviii. 14, will bear his infirmity: i. e. the natural cheerfulness and vivacity of a man's spirit, will enable him to bear up under bodily pains: but a wounded spirit, who can bear? When our prop itself is broken, we must needs sink; and fall under the most gloomy apprehensions, that guilt and hell can create in a soul, already singed with those eternal flames into which with unspeakable horror it daily expects to be plunged. Oh! think what exact torture thou must needs endure, when God shall make deep wounds in thy spirit; and let fall great drops of his burning wrath, on that part of thy soul, that is infinitely more tender and sensible than the apple of thine eye. Imagine what sharp and intolerable pains those martyrs sustained, who, as the Apostle tells us, Heb. xi. 37, were sawn asunder. Or, suppose that thou thyself wert now under the ragged teeth of a saw, drawn to and fro upon the tenderest parts of thy body; tearing thy flesh, thy nerves, and sinews; grating and jarring upon thy very bones: yet all the extremity of this, is nothing to what torments the conscience feels, when God causeth his sword to enter into it, to rive it up; when he makes deep and bloody wounds in it, and, instead of pouring in healing balm, with a heavy hand chafes them with fire and brimstone.

Now in such a time of anguish and distress as this, what is there that can relieve the afflicted soul? The worldling, that heaps up his ill-gotten treasures and wallows in thick clay, when God comes to ransack his conscience and to set before him the guilt of his sins, will then know, with terror and amazement, that there is a justice which gold and silver cannot bribe. The voluptuous person will no longer relish any savouriness in his carnal delights, when once God writes bitter

things against him: Job xiii. 26. What is mirth and music to him, that can now hear nothing but the screeches of his own conscience? What is a full cup to him, that can now taste nothing but the cup of fury and trembling? Little content will the noble take in his honourable titles, if all this while his conscience call him reprobate. A title of honour will no more abate the torments of conscience, than it doth mitigate Beelzebub's torments to be styled Prince of the Devils. All the world's honey will not serve to allay the envenomed stingings of conscience. That is a fiery serpent, a deaf adder, that will not be charmed by all the alluring pleasures of the world. These are vain and impertinent to one, whose thoughts are wholly possessed with the fear of wrath and hell, from which these cannot deliver him. When God makes a wound in the spirit, the whole world cannot mâke a plaister broad enough to cover it.

(2.) The world is a vain and useless thing at the Hour of Death.

Possibly, many of us may never conflict with the Terrors of Conscience, nor have that conviction of the World's Vanity: but yet we must all conflict with death, that King of Terrors.

Suppose, therefore, what must certainly once be, that we were now gasping our last, our tongues faltering, our eyestrings breaking, our limbs quivering, a dead cold and stiffness invading us; were our souls tossed to and fro upon our expiring breath, and, like wrecks at sea, sometimes cast up, and by and by sucked back again, what could stand us in stead, and make our passage happy at such a time as this?

Now the soul requires the strongest, the richest cordials. Prepare it one mingled of the best ingredients the whole world can afford; cast into the cup riches, honour, pleasure, the quintessence of all that is here desirable: yet, alas! what is all this world to a dying man, who is just leaving it?

Thy wicked companions, with whom thou hast laughed and sínned away thy freshest years, will in this thy last extremity forsake thee; or, if they do attend so sad a spectacle, alas, what miserable comforters will they be! They will then prove another bad conscience to thee; and bring to thy remembrance with horror the sins, which thou hast committed by their en

ticement, or they by thine. Thy mirth and jollity will then be turned into groans and howlings. All things will stare ruthfully upon thee; and, when thou callest upon them for help, confess their impotency to rescue thee from the gripe of death and from the doom of justice *.

Sickness is usually a busy time with conscience; and, when it is packing up for a remove into the other world, it will be sure to gather together all the sins of a man's life, and bind them as a heavy and insupportable burden upon his soul. Can thy sensual pleasures divert thee now? As they have served thee to pass away the tediousness of time, can they serve to pass away the infinite tediousness of eternity? Nay, how can it otherwise be, but that a mind, long soaked and softened by these, should be made the more capable of receiving deep impressions of grief, anguish, and despair?

Indeed, while we eagerly pursue any of these worldly enjoyments, we are but running after a shadow: and, as shadows vanish, and are swallowed up in the greater shade of night; so, when the night of death shall cast its thick shade about us, and wrap us up in deep and substantial darkness, all these vain shadows will then disappear and vanish quite out of sight.

Now could we have the same opinion of the world in the time of our health and prosperity, as we shall certainly have when we lie languishing and drawing on to eternity, we should be able then with a generous scorn to live above it and despise it. Shall we prize those comforts, which will be none to us, when we have the greatest need of comfort? Shall we glue our affections to that, which either is so faithless that it will not, or so weak that it cannot help us?

So vain a thing is it, that it cannot resist the disgrace, that sleep or only winking doth. Shut but your eyes, and what becomes of all the pomp and lustre, the beauty and splendour, that we so much admire in the world? It all vanisheth into darkness and nothing. Sleep snatcheth us from it; and, for the time, we have no more enjoyment of it than if we were dead. Every night we die in our beds; and yet every day

* Non domus et fundus, non æris acervus et auri,
Agroto domini deduxit corpore febres,

Non animo curas. Horat. Ep. 2. Lib. i.

are so immersed in the pleasures and businesses of the world, as if we were never to die indeed.

Since, therefore, we have higher and nobler objects to fix our affections on, let us not lavish them out upon these worldly vanities, which can at no time prove real comforts unto us; and then least of all, when we have most need of comfort. That is a Seventh Demonstration.

8. Again. All things in the World are vain, BECAUSE THEY

ARE UNSUITABLE.

True, indeed, they are suited to the necessities of the body, and serve to feed and clothe that; but he is a beast, or worse, that reckons himself provided for, when only his bodily wants are supplied. Have we not all of us precious and immortal Souls, capable and desirous of happiness? Do not these crave to be satisfied? Do they not deserve to be heard? Shall our vile bodies, which are but dust and worms-meat, engross all our care how to please and pamper them, and shall the necessities of our never-dying souls be neglected? What have you laid up in store for these? Alas! that, which most men busy themselves about, is to heap up temporal riches, to join house to house, and land to land, that they might dwell alone upon the earth: Isaiah v. 8.

But know, thou dost but give thy soul husks and swine'smeat, when thou settest the whole world before it. And, therefore, our Saviour justly brands the rich man in the Gospel for a fool, that, when he had stuffed up his barns with corn, said to his soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years: Luke xii. 19. a fool indeed! to measure the soul's goods by the barn, or by the bushel.

The very same is the folly of most men, who think they are in all respects well provided for, if they can but scrape together a great estate; whereas the soul can no more live upon these things, than the body can upon a thought or notion.

There is a three-fold unsuitableness, between worldly things and the soul.

(1.) The soul is Spiritual: these are drossy and material. Of all things belonging to a man, his breath is the most subtle, invisible, and spiritual. But now the soul is called the Breath of God; and therefore must needs be spiritual in a high degree.

* Genesis ii. 7.