mmunion with God. Now, how shall this be recovered again?
How shall this pearl of great price be found?

Certainly we must agree upon two principles, and according to them walk,
ere we come within reach of this. It is a great question that is of more
moment than all the debates among men,--how shall man's ruin be made up,
and the treasure be found? If ye think it concerns you, I pray you hearken
to this, and condescend(497) upon these two grounds, that the question may
be right stated. One is, we have all lost happiness, fallen from the top
of our excellency into the lowest dungeon of misery. We are cast down from
heaven to hell. There needs not much to persuade you of the truth of this
in general. But alas! who ponders it in their hearts? And until ye
think more seriously upon it, ye will never be serious in the search for
reparation of it. All of you by your daily experience find that ye are
miserable creatures. Ye have no satisfaction nor contentment. Ye are
compassed about with many infirmities and griefs. But this is but an
appendix of your misery. All the calamities of this life are but a
consequent, a little stream of that boundless ocean of misery that is yet
insensible to you. Therefore enter into your own hearts, and consider what
Adam once was, and what ye now are, nay, what ye will all quickly be, if
God prevent it not. We are born heirs of wrath and hell. It is not only
the infinite loss of that blessed sight of his face for evermore, which an
eternal enjoyment of creature pleasures could not compensate the want of,
one hour; but it is the kingdom of darkness, and the devil that we are all
born to inherit. Let this then once take root in your heart, that ye are
in extreme misery, and that a remedy must be provided, else ye must
perish. Now when this principle is established, ye must agree upon this
also. "But out of myself I must go. Blessedness I must have. It is not in
me. While I look in, there is nothing but all kind of emptiness, and,
which is worse, all kind of misery. Not only the common lot of creatures
(that none is sufficient to its own well being) is incident to me, but I
have lost that being which I had in another, which was my well being, and
do now possess, or shall shortly possess, all misery." Now, are ye settled
upon these two? I am not happy, I must go out of myself to find it. It is
not in me, in my flesh dwells no good thing, in my spirit and flesh both,
is nothing good. Ask then this