Watchman Of The South

THE PROFITABLENESS OF GODLINESS.

There is no other thing here in this world that can yield any solid or stable content to our mind. For all present enjoyments are transient and evanescent; and of any future thing, in this kingdom of change and contingency, there can be no assurance. There is nothing below large enough to fill our vast capacities or to satiate our boundless desires, or to appease our squeamish delicacy. There is nothing whose sweetness we do not presently exhaust and suck dry; whereof thence we do not soon grow weary, quite loathing, or faintly liking it. There is not anything which is not slippery and fleeting; so that we can for a long time hope to possess it, or for any time can enjoy it without restless care in keeping it, and anxious fear of losing it. Nothing there is, in the pursuance, the custody, the defence, and maintenance whereof we are not liable to disappointments and crosses. Nothing consequently there is productive of any sound content to the fastidious, impatient, greedy, and restless heart of man. The greatest confluence of present, corporal, secular things, (of all the health, the riches, the dignity, the power, the friendships and dependencies, the wit the learning and wisdom, the reputation and renown in this world) will not afford much of it: which yet is but an imaginary supposition; for in effect, hardly do all such accommodations of life concur in any state. There is ever some dead fly in our box which marreth our ointment: some adherent inconvenience which soureth the gust of our enjoyments; there is always some good thing absent which we do want and long for; some ill thing present or in prospect, which we abhor, would avoid, do fear may come. If, therefore, we would find content, we must not seek it here; we must want it or have it from another world: it must come hither from heaven, and thence only piety can fetch it down. What is poverty to him, for whom God is concerned to provide? What is disgrace to him, that hath the regard and approbation of God?—What is danger to him whom God continually protecteth? What can any distress work on him whom God doth comfort, and will relieve? What is anything to him, who is sensible that all things are purposely disposed to him by that Wisdom which perfectly knoweth what is best? by that Goodness which entirely loveth him?—Dr. Isaac Barrow.