me necessity others laboured under. Just so is it here, there is
nothing would persuade a man to travel, and toil all his lifetime, about
the creatures, and not to suffer his soul to take rest, if he did believe
to find that immediately without travel, which he endures so much travel
for. And therefore the believing Christian is only a wise man, who is
instructed where the things themselves, true peace and joy, do lie, and so
seeks to be filled with the things themselves, for which only men seek
other things, and not as other men who catch at the shadows, that they may
at length find the substance itself, for this were far about, and labour
in vain.

Peace is so sweet and comprehensive a word, that the Jews made their usual
compellation, "Peace be unto you,"(451) importing all felicity, and the
affluence of all good. And indeed our Saviour found no fitter word to
express his matchless good-will to the well-being of his disciples nor
this (Luke xxiv. 36.), when he saluted them after his resurrection, "Peace
be unto you," which is as much as if he had wished absolute satisfaction,
all contentment and happiness that themselves would desire. Now this peace
hath a relation to God, to ourselves, and our brethren. I will exclude
none of them from the present wish; for even brotherly concord and peace
suits well with the main subject of this chapter, which is the bearing of
our neighbours' infirmities, and not pleasing ourselves, and such like
mutual duties of charity. But certainly the other two relations are most
intrinsic to happiness, because there is nothing nearer to us than the
blessed God; and next to him, there is nothing comes so near us as
ourselves. The foundation of all our misery, is that enmity between man
and God, which is as if heaven and earth should fall out into an
irreconcilable discord, and upon that should follow the suspension of the
light of the stars, and the withdrawing of the influences of heaven, and
the withholding the refreshment of the early and latter rain. If such
dissension fell between them, that the heavens should be as brass to the
earth, and would refuse the clouds when they cry for rain, or the herbs
and minerals when they crave the influences from above, what a desolate
and irksome dwelling-place would the earth be? What a dreary habitation
would we find it? Even so it is between God and men. All our being, all
our well-being, hangs upon the good aspect of his countenance. In his
favour i