revenues, and some have maintained, that they were to live on the free contributions of the people. But this tenet was quickly condemned as HERESY in honest Wickliff, and the clergy have gotten the victory, and now esteem all due unto them that they can by any means obtain. But from the beginning it was not so; and it is well, if in such a way, men are able to maintain the frame of mind we are inquiring after, with which are connected life and peace.

Again, God continues to cast contempt on earthly things, by giving always the greatest portion to his avowed enemies. This was a temptation under the old covenant, but is highly instructive under the new; none will judge those things to be of real value, which a wise man casts out daily unto swine, making little or no use of them in his family. Those monsters of men, Nero and Heliogabalus, so pernicious to human society, that their not being, would have been to appearance the interest of mankind, had more power over the things of this world, than ever had the best of men: look on all the principal treasures and powers of this world

as in the hand of one of these tyrants, and so disposed of by Divine Providence, and you may see at what rate God values them. Doth not God proclaim herein, that the things of this world are not to be so esteemed? If they were, and had a real worth in themselves, would the righteous God make such a distribution of them? Those whom he most esteems, have comparatively the meanest share, and many are exercised with all the evils with which the want of them can be attended, while his open and avowed enemies have more than they know what to do with. Who then would set their affections on those things which God poureth into the bosoms of the vilest of men? It plainly appears, you may go and take the world, and take a curse, death, and hell, along with it; and, "what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" What can any man do, who considers this, and who will not forego all his hopes and expectations from God; but retreat unto the faith and pursuit of things spiritual and eternal, as containing an excellency in them incomparably above all that may be enjoyed here below?

Again, God pours contempt on earthly things, in giving continual instances of their uncertainty and emptiness, utterly disappointing many that have had expectations from them. The ways are various, the instances so multiplied, that the greater part of mankind (unless they are like the fool in the Gospel) do live in perpetual fears or apprehensions, that they shall speedily lose what they enjoy; or other wise they must be under the power of a stupid security: but, there is such an account given of them by the wise man, Eccles. ii., unto which nothing can be added, and which neither reason, nor experience, is able to contradict.

By these, and the like ways, doth God cast contempt on all things here below; discovering both the folly and falsehood of the promises which the world makes to decoy and entangle our affections. This, therefore, is to be laid as the FOUNDATION in all our considerations to what, or to whom, we shall cleave with our affections; that God hath not only declared the insufficiency of earthly things, to give us that rest and happiness after which we seek, but hath also poured con

tempt upon them in his holy and wise disposal of them in the world.

2. God hath added to their vanity by shortening the lives of men, reducing their continuance here to so short and uncertain a season, as it is impossible they can take any solid satisfaction in what they enjoy here below. "Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand's breadth, and mine age is nothing before thee." Hence the Psalmist draws two conclusions: (1.)"That every man at his best estate is but vanity." (2) That every man walks in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain, he heapeth up riches, and knows not who shall gather them." Psalm xxxix. 5, 6. When men lived eight or nine hundred years, they had opportunity to taste all the sweetness that was in creature comforts, to make large provisions of, and to have long projections about them; but when they had so, they all issued in that wickedness, which" brought the flood on the world of ungodly men." And the case is the same to this day; the more men enjoy of this world, and the longer they possess earthly things, the more will they abound in sin, and provoke God,

unless divine grace interposes. But, now God hath reduced the life of man to the small pittance of seventy years, and that space is generally shortened, or embittered by various and innumerable incidents. Some years pass before men begin to have a taste of this life; many things occur to make us weary of them before the end of our days; and but few of the human race, not one of a thousand, attain the years beyond which nothing can be reckoned but travail and sorrow. As, then, the all-wise God hath left no such season for the enjoyment of the world, as might put a value upon it; so the uncertainty and shortness of human life (the strongest of mankind cannot insure the next day) render all contrivances and endeavours about earthly things, both vain and foolish. And when it is remembered, that he whose continuance is so short and uncertain here, is notwithstanding a candidate for eternal happiness or misery; and that his blessedness depends wholly on setting his affections on things above; must not all they who place them on things below forfeit all pretensions to reason, as well as bid defiance to the grace of God?