o settle and find solid rest
and peace. Nay, how is it possible that they can give that tranquillity
and contentation to the heart and soul of man, that are so utterly in
their natures disproportioned to it, both because they are only suited to
the senses, and likewise for that they are changeable? Now the soul is
framed with a higher capacity, and can no more be satiated with visible
things, than a man that is hungry can be satisfied with gold; and besides,
it is immortal, and must have something to survive all the changes of
time, and therefore is likely to rest nowhere but in that which hath
eternal stability. Now, though these things cannot truly fill the heart,
yet they swell the belly, like the east wind, or like the prodigal's
husks, fill it with wind, which causeth many torments and distempers in
the soul; and though they cannot give ease, yet they may be as thorns to
prick and pierce a man through with many sorrows, as our Saviour speaks.
So that there is no more wisdom or gain in this, than in gathering an
armful of thorns, and enclosing and pressing hard unto them,--the more
hardly and strongly we grip them, the more grievously they pierce us; or
as if a man would flee into a hedge of thorns in a tempest,--the further he
thrusts into it, he is the worse pricked: and that which he is fallen into
is worse than that he fleeth from. I am sure all your experiences give a
harmonious testimony to this, that there is no solid, permanent, constant,
and equable heart-joy and contentation in all the fancied and imaginary
felicities that this world adores. There is nothing of these things, that
is not lesser, and lower in actual possession, nor in the first
apprehension of them afar off. Nothing in them answers either our desires
or expectations; and therefore, instead of peace and tranquillity, they
breed more inward torment and disquiet, because of that necessary and
inevitable disappointment that attends them. Therefore the apostle passeth
all these things in silence, when he is to write of purpose, to give a
fulness of joy; for he knows that in them there is neither that joy, nor
that fulness of joy he would wish for from them; but it is other things he
writes for this end.

Now, indeed, there hath been some wiser than others, that have their
apprehension far above the rest of mankind, and have laboured to frame
some rules and precepts to lead man into this true rest and tranquillity.
And truly, in this they have done