ment, after mature consideration of all that can be said of the
wicked's best estate, and the godly's worst, setting down resolute
conclusions for himself--"It is good for me to draw near to God," yea, so
determinate in it, that if none of the world should be of that mind, he
would not change it,--though all should walk in other ways, he would choose
to be rather alone in this, than in the greatest crowd of company in any
other. Now, I say, when we have such a copy cast us, a man of excellent
parts in sobriety and sadness, choosing that way, which all in words
confess to be the best, should not this awake us out of our dreams and
raise us up to some more attention and consideration of what we are doing?
The words, you see, are the holy resolution of a holy heart, concerning
that which is the chiefest good. You see the way to happiness, and you
find the particular application of that to David's soul, or of his soul to
it. We shall speak a word of the thing itself, then of the commendation of
it, then of the application of it.

For the thing itself,--drawing near to God,--it gives us some ground to take
a view of the posture in which men are found by nature, far off from God.
Our condition by nature I cannot so fitly express, as in the apostle's
words, (Eph. ii. 12,)--"Without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of
Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and
without God in the world." A deplorable estate indeed, hopeless and
helpless! No hope in it, that is the extremity of misery, the refuse of
all conditions. "Without Christ, and without God." Oh! these are words of
infinite weight: without those, without whom it is simply impossible to be
happy, and without whom it is not possible but to be miserable,--without
the fountain of light, life, and consolation, without which there is
nothing but pure darkness, without any beam of light; nothing but death,
without the least breathing of life, nothing but vexation, without the
least drop of consolation. In a word, without these, and wanting these,
whom, if you want, it were good to be spoiled of all being, to be nothing,
if that could be, or never to have been any thing. Men will seek death,
and cannot find it. O what a loss and deprivement is the loss of God,
which makes death more desirable than life, and not to be at all,
infinitely preferable to any being! Now, it is true, that the bringing in
of multitudes within the pale of the visible church, is