wishes, while he is in this world. He would
despise the delicacies of kings, and refuse their dainties, if he might
sit at this table that is spread on the mountain of God's church, a full
feast which fills the soul with peace, joy, and hope, as much as now it is
capable of. Now these precious fruits you see in the words show the root
that brings them forth, and the branch that immediately bears them. The
root is the God of hope, and the power of the Holy Ghost. And a soul being
ingrafted as a living branch by faith into Christ, receives virtue to
bring forth such pleasant fruits, so that they grow immediately upon the
branch of believing, but the sap and virtue of both come from the Holy
Ghost, and the God of hope. Or to take it up in another like notion. This
is the river which gladdeneth the city of God with its streams, that
waters the garden of the Lord with its threefold stream. For you see it is
parted in three heads, and every one of them is derived from another. The
first in the order of nature is peace,--a sweet, calm, and refreshing
river, which sometimes overflows like the river Nilus, and then it runs in
a stream of joy, which is the high spring tide but ordinarily it sends
forth the comfortable stream of hope, and that in abundance. Now this
threefold river hath its original high, as high as the God of hope, and
the power of the Holy Ghost, but the channel of it is situated low, and it
is believing in Christ.

To begin then with the first of these. Truly there is nothing can be
spoken that sounds more sweetly in the ears of men than peace and joy.
They need nothing to commend them, for they have a sufficient testimonial,
and letters of recommendation written upon the affections of all men. For
what is it that all men labour and seek after but this? It is not any
outward earthly thing that is desired for itself, but rather for the peace
and contentment the mind expects in it. And therefore, this must be of
itself the proper object or good of the soul, which, if it can be had
immediately, without that long and endless compass about the creatures,
certainly a man cannot but think himself happy, and will have no missing
of other things, as if a man could live healthfully and joyfully without
meat, and without all appetite for it, no doubt but he would think himself
the happiest man in the world, and would think it no pain to him to want
the dainties of princes, but rather that he were delivered from the
weariso