od, raiment, and all things necessary in this life?
"Be careful for nothing." "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall
eat, or drink," &c. "Seek them not as your chief good." But what is his
disposition towards spiritual and eternal things, and how ought ye to look
upon them? "Seek them, set your heart upon them, look upon them as your
treasure, and where your treasure is, let your heart be there also." So
then you see here two callings and employments of a man in the world,--two
universal callings that comprehend all men, one natural to us, and
unlawful, the other divine, and lawful, the one paganish, the other
Christian. What is the employment of all men out of Christ? There are many
different callings and employments among men. One spends his time and
thoughts one way, and another another way, but all of them agree in one
general, whatever they are: Their heart is here. The thoughts they have
are bounded and circumscribed in this present world. They are careful for
nothing else but what concerns their back and belly,(482) or their name
and credit. Take the best of them, whose employment seems most abstracted
from the common affairs and distractions among men, yet their affections
run no higher than this present world. On the other hand, what should be
the exercise and employment of a Christian? It is even this, whatever he
be, or whatever his occupation be among men, he drives a higher trade with
heaven, that should take him up. The world gets but his spare hours. He is
upon a more noble and high project. He aspires after a kingdom. His heart
is above where Christ is, and where his treasure is. And these things
exhaust his affections and pains. Christ Jesus once takes the man's heart
off these baser things, that are not worthy of an immortal spirit, let
be(483) a spirit who is a partaker of a divine nature. But because the
creature cannot be satisfied within itself, its happiness depends upon
something without itself, (and this speaks out the vanity of the creature,
and something of God, that is peculiar to him, to be self sufficient,)
therefore Christ changes the object of the heart, and fixes the spirit
upon a nobler and divine exercise. Since the spirit of a man cannot abide
within doors without starving, it must run out upon something, therefore
Jesus Christ hath described its bounds and way, its end and period.
Before, a man sought many things, because not one was satisfying, that the
want of one might be supp