orld, who
thought their riches and revenues, their offices and dignities, a
foundation and well spring of contentment to them and their children, and
are ready to say with that man in the parable, "Soul take thy rest, thou
hast enough laid up for many years." "Charge them, says he," &c. 1 Tim.
vi. 16-19. O a charge worthy to be engraven on the tables of our hearts,
worthy to be written on the ports of all cities, and the gates of all
palaces. You would all have a foundation of lasting joy, says he, but why
seek you lasting joy in fading things, and certain joy in uncertain
riches, and solid contentment in empty things, and not rather in the
living God, who is the unexhausted spring of all good things? Therefore,
if you would truly boast of to-morrow, or sing a solid _requiem_ to your
own hearts, there is another treasure to be laid up in store against the
time to come,--the time only worthy to be called time, that is eternity,
and that is study to do good, and be rich in good works, in works of
piety, of mercy, of equity, of sobriety. This is a better foundation for
the time to come, or, rather receive and embrace the promise of eternal
life made to such,--that free and gracious promise of life in the gospel,
and so you may supply all the wants and indigencies of your present
enjoyments, with the precious hope of eternal life which cannot make
ashamed. But what is the way that the most part of men take to mitigate
and sweeten their present hardships? Even like that of the fool in the
parable Luke xii. They either have something laid up for many years, or
else their projects and designs reach to many years. The truth is, they
have more pleasure in the expectation of such things, than in the real
possession, but that pleasure is but imaginary also. How many thoughts and
designs are continually turning in the heart of man,--how to be rich, how
to get greater gain, or more credit? Men build castles in the air, and
fancy to themselves, as it were, new worlds of mere possible things, and
in such an employment of the heart, there is some poor deceiving of
present sorrows, but at length they recur with greater violence. Every man
makes romances for himself, pretty fancies of his own fortune, as if he
had the disposing of it himself. He sits down, as it were, and writes an
almanack and prognostication in his own secret thoughts, and designs his
own prosperity, gain, and advantage, and pleasures or joys, and when we
have thus ranke