the nature of it. This is
a great point of God's image and conformity with him, whose infinite
blessedness and joy riseth from that perfect comprehension and intuitive
beholding of himself, and his own incomprehensible riches. So then, man's
happiness or misery must depend upon this,--both what the soul fixeth upon,
and what it apprehendeth to be in it. For if that eternal and universal
good, the all-fulness of God, be the centre of the soul's desires and
endeavours, and there be apprehended and discovered in God that infinite
excellency and variety of delights which nothing else can afford so much
as a shadow of, then there cannot but result from such a conjunction of
the soul's apprehension, suitable to the fulness of God, and of the
excellency and goodness of God, suitable to the desires of the soul, such
a rest and tranquillity, such joy and satisfaction, as cannot choose but
make the soul infinitely happier than the enjoyment of any other thing
could do.

This being the thing, then, which all men's desires naturally tend unto,
this tranquillity and perfect satisfaction of the heart being that which
carries all men's hearts after it, and that which men seek for itself, and
which they seek in all other things, the great misery of man is, that he
mistakes the way to it, and seeks it where it is not to be found. The
generality of men are so far degenerated, both from the impression of a
divine majesty, and the sense of an immortal being within themselves, that
they imagine to content and ease their own hearts in these outward,
inconstant, perishing things, and so their life is spent in catching at
shadows, in feeding on the wind, in labouring in the fire. There is
nothing so plentifully satisfies our expectations as can quit the cost,
and recompense the expense of our labour, toil, grief, and travail about
it. There is nothing therefore but a continual, restless agitation of the
heart from one thing to another, and that in a round, circling about, from
one thing that now displeases or disappoints to things that were formerly
loathed, as a sick man turns him from one side to another, or changes beds
often, and at length returns, expecting to find some ease where he lay at
first. And it may be judged that all circular motions are eternal, and so
they can never be supposed to attain their end,--that is, rest and
tranquillity. Therefore a soul thus carried in a round, by the vain
imaginations of his heart, is likely never t