that gourd. It is gall and
vinegar mixed in with them. Were it not more wisdom to be either one thing
or another? If ye will have the pleasures of sin for a season, take them
wholly, and renounce God, and see if your heart can endure that. If your
heart cannot condescend to that, I pray you renounce them wholly, and ye
shall find more exquisite and sure pleasures in godliness, at his right
hand. O what a noble entertainment hath the soul in God; the peace and joy
of the Holy Ghost is a kingdom indeed!

Sermon XII.

Isaiah xxvi. 3.--"Thou shall keep him in perfect peace, whose mind
is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee."

All men love to have privileges above others. Every one is upon the design
and search after some well-being, since Adam lost that which was true
happiness. We all agree upon the general notion of it, but presently men
divide in the following of particulars. Here all men are united in seeking
after some good; something to satisfy their souls, and satiate their
desires. Nay, but they scatter presently in the prosecution of it,
because, according to every man's fancy and corrupt humour, they attribute
that good unto diverse things; and when they meet with disappointment,
they change their opinion of that, but are made no wiser, for they turn
from one to another of that same kind, in which their imagination hath
supposed blessedness to be; and therefore they will return to that which
they first loathed and rejected. Is there, then, no such thing in the
world as blessedness? Is it not to be found among men? Are all men's
insatiable desires in vain? Is a creature made up and composed of desires,
to keep it in continual torment and vexation of spirit? No certainly, it
is, and it is found by some. All the world strives about it, but the man
only who trusts and believes in God, he it is, who carries it away from
them,--who hath this privilege beyond the world. And why do so many miss
it? Because they do not see or suspect that it is blessedness indeed which
he enjoys; but, on the contrary, their corrupted imaginations represent
godliness, and a godly man's self-indigency and dependence on God, as the
greatest misery and shame. The godly man hides not his blessedness from
the world; no, he proclaims it when he hath found it,--he would that all
enjoyed it with him. And if there were no more to declare that it doth not
consist in worldly things, this might suffice--they are not communic