much to discover the vanity and madness
of the common practice of men, and to draw man from sensible and outward
things, to things invisible and spiritual. Yet there is a defectiveness in
all the rules that natural reason can reach unto. There is some
crookedness withal adheres to them, which shows our departure from our
original. There are many excellent discourses of morality in heathen
writings, which may be very subservient to a Christian, and useful to the
composing and settling of his mind, amidst all the fluctuations and
uncertainties of this world. They may come well in as subsidies and guards
to a Christian's heart, to preserve that peace and joy it hath from God,
and keep out the ordinary tumultuous passions that disturb the most part
of men. But here is the lamentable failing, that while they call a man off
things without, as adventitious, they lead him but into his own spirit
within, as if he could there find that rest in the very enjoyment of his
poor, miserable, wretched self. But Christ Jesus calls us into our own
spirits, not to dwell there. For O what a loathsome and irksome habitation
is a defiled heart and a guilty conscience! But rather, that finding
nothing of that joy and refreshment within, we may then freely and fully
forsake ourselves, as well as the world without, and transport into God in
Christ, the only habitation of joy and delight, that being filled with
anguish from the world, and from ourselves, we may more willingly divorce
from both, and agree to join unto Jesus Christ, and to embrace him in our
hearts, who is the only Fountain of life and joy, who had no other errand
and business from heaven, but to repair man's joy,--as grievous a breach as
any in the creation,--a thing as much missed and sought after as any thing,
yea, sought after in all things that are sought. John xv. 11. "These
things I have spoken to you, that your joy may be full." Therefore the
apostle propounds this as the end of his writing on this subject,--the word
of life; these things write I "that your joy may be full;" and the way to
attain this fulness of joy, he expressed in the former verse,--by
fellowship with the Father and the Son.

That which makes all other things disproportioned to the soul of man, to
give it this joy, is the extreme unsuitableness between them. The soul
hath an infinite capacity, and besides, an immortality of endurance, but
they are condemned under impotency to supply that infinite void and