rated from that, and so how far man's nature is
spoiled,--"Boast not thyself," &c. The true boasting we were created unto,
hath a sufficient foundation, even such as will bear the weight of
triumph, but that which men's spirits are now naturally set upon, cannot
carry, cannot sound such gloriation, and therefore this boasting makes men
ridiculous. If you saw a man glorying in rags, setting forth himself to be
admired in them, or boasting in some vain, despicable, and base thing, you
would pity him, or laugh at him as one distempered. The truth is, the
natural man is mad, hath lost his judgment, and is under the greatest
distraction imaginable since the fall. That fall hath troubled his brains,
and they are never settled, till the new creation come to put all right
again, and compose the heart of man. I say, all other distractions are but
particular, in respect to particular things, but there is a general
distraction over all mankind, in reference to things of most general and
most eternal concernment. Now, fools and mad persons, they retain the same
affections and passions that are in men, as anger, love, hatred, grief,
joy, &c., but it is so much the worse, since the judgment, which is the
only directive and guide of them, is troubled. Now they are set on wrong
objects, they run at random, and are under no kind of rule, and so they
hurry the poor man and put him in a pitiful case. Now indeed so it is with
us,--since sin entered, the soul is wholly turned off God, the only true
object of delight, in which only there can be solid gloriation. The mind
of man is blinded, and his passions are strong, and so they are now spent
upon empty vanities, and carried headlong without judgment. Oftentimes he
glories in that which is his shame, and boasts in that which is his sin,
and which will cause nothing but shame, the more weight be laid upon it.
There is in man an oblivion and forgetfulness of God, and in this darkness
of the ignorance of God, everything is apprehended or misapprehended as
present sense suggests, and as it fancies a conveniency or excellency.
Thither the soul is carried, as if it were something, and then it is but
the east-wind. There is nothing beside God that is a fit matter of
boasting, because it lacks one of the essential ingredients--either it is
not suitable to the soul, or it is not truly our own. There wants either
proportion to the vast capacity and void of our desires, and so cannot
fill up that really,