d it is full of inventions indeed.
But they are all in vain, that is, all of them insufficient for this great
purpose. All of them cannot make one hair that is black, white, much less
redeem the soul. But besides, they are destructive. They pretend to
deliver, but they destroy. A desperate wicked heart imagineth evil
continually, evil against God, and evil to our own souls. And a deceitful
heart smooths over the evil, and presents it under another notion, and so,
under pretence of a friend, it is the greatest enemy a man hath,--a
bosom-enemy. All men's inventions, thoughts, cogitations, projects, and
endeavours, what do they tend to but to the satisfaction of their
lusts,--either the lusts of the mind, as ambition, pride, avarice, passion,
revenge, and such like,--or the lust of the body, as pleasure to the ears
and eyes, and to the flesh? Man was made with an upright soul, with a
dominion over that brutish part, more like angels, but now, all his
invention runs upon that base and beastly part, how to adorn it, how to
beautify it, how to satisfy it, and for this his soul must be a drudge and
slave. And if men rise up to any thoughts of a higher life, yet what is it
for, but to magnify and exalt the flesh--to seek an excellency within,
which is lost, and so to satisfy the pride and self-love of the heart. If
any man comes this length, as to apprehend some misery, yet how vain are
his inventions about the remedy of it. Not knowing how desperate the
disease is, men seek help in themselves, and think, by industry and care
and art, to raise them up in some measure, and please God by some
expiations or sacrifices of their own works. Now, this tends to no other
purpose but to satisfy the lusts of man's pride, and so it increases that
which was man's first malady, and keeps them from the true physician. In a
word, all man's inventions are to hasten misery on him, or to blindfold
himself till it come on; all his invention cannot reach a delivery from
this misery. Let us therefore consider this which Solomon hath found out,
and if we carefully consider it, and accurately ponder it in relation to
our own souls, then have we also found it with him. Consider, I say, what
man once was, and what you are now, and bewail your misery and the
fountain of it--our departure from the fountain of life and blessedness.
Know what you are, not only weak but wicked, whose art and power lies only
in wickedness, skilful and able only to make yourselve