Sermon CXL

SERMON CXL.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, APRIL 2, 1620.

ECCLESIASTES V. 13, 14.

There is an evil sickness that I have seen under the sun: riches reserved to the owners thereof, for their evil. And these riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and in his hand is nothing.

The kingdom of heaven is a feast; to get you a stomach to that, we have preached abstinence. The kingdom of heaven is a treasure too, and to make you capable of that, we would bring you to a just valuation of this world. He that hath his hands full of dirt, cannot take up amber; if they he full of counters, he cannot take up gold. This is the book, which St. Hierome chose to expound to Blesilla at Rome, when his purpose was to draw her to heaven, by making her to understand this world; it was the book fittest for that particular way: and it is the book which St. Ambrose calls Bonum ad omnia magistrum; A good master to correct us in this world, a good master to direct us to the next. For though Solomon had asked at God's hand only the wisdom fit for government, yet since he had bent his wishes upon so good a thing as wisdom, and in his wishes, even of the best thing, had

been so moderate, God abounded in his grant, and gave him all kinds, natural and civil, and heavenly wisdom. And therefore when the fathers and the later authors in the Roman church, exercise their considerations, whether Solomon were wiser than Adam, than Moses, than the prophets, than the apostles', they needed not to have been so tender, as to except only the Virgin Mary, for though she had such a fulness of heavenly wisdom, as brought her to rest in his bosom, in heaven, who had rested in hers upon earth, yet she was never proposed for an example of natural, or of civil knowledge. Solomon was of all; and therefore St. Austin says of him; Prophetavit in omnibus libris suis, Solomon prophesied in all his books; and though in this book his principal scope be moral, and practic wisdom, yet in this there are also mysteries, and prophecies, and many places concerning our eternal happiness, after this life.

But because there is no third object for man's love; this world, and the next, are all that he can consider, as he hath but two eyes, so he hath but two objects, and then Primus actus voluntatis est amor⁸, Man's love is never idle, that is ever directed upon something, if our love might be drawn from this world, Solomon thought that a direct way to convey that upon the next: and therefore consider Solomon's method, and wisdom in pursuing this way: because all the world together, hath amazing greatness, and an amazing glory in it, for the order and harmony, and continuance of it (for if a man have many manors, he thinks himself a great lord, and if a man have many lords under him, he is a great king, and if he have kings under him, he is a great emperor: and yet what profit were it, to get all the world and lose thy soul) therefore Solomon shakes the world in pieces, he dissects it, and cuts it up before thee, that so thou mayest the better see how poor a thing, that particular is, whatsoever it be, that thou settest thy love upon in this world. He threads a string of the best stones, of the best jewels in this world, knowledge in the first chapter, delicacies in the second, long life in the third, ambition, riches, fame, strength in the rest, and then he shows you an ire, a flaw, a cloud in all these stones; he lays this infancy upon them all, vanity, and vexation of spirit.

¹ Augustine. * Aquinas.

Which two words, vanity and vexation, because they go through all, to everything Solomon applies one of them, they are the inseparable leaven, that sours all, and therefore are intended as well of this text, as of the other text, we shall by the way make a little stop, upon those two words; first, How could the wisdom of Solomon and of the Holy Ghost, avile and abase this world more, than by this annihilating of that in the name of vanity, for what is that? It is not enough to recite a distinction; it is so absolutely nothing, as that we cannot tell you, what it is. Let St. Bernard do it; Vanum est, quod nec confert plenitudinem continenti; For who amongst you hath not room for another bag, or amongst us for another benefice? Nec fulcimentum innitenti, For who stands fast upon that, which is not fast itself? and the world passeth, and the lusts thereof; Necfructum laboranti, For you have sown much, and bring in little, Ye eat, but have not enough, ye drink, but are not filled, ye are clothed, but wax not warm, and he that earneth wages, puts it into a bag with holes³, Midsummer runs out at Michaelmas, and at the year's end he hath nothing.

And such a vanity is this world, lest it were not enough, to call it vanity alone, simply vanity, though that language in which Solomon, and the Holy Ghost spoke, have no degrees of comparison, no superlative, (they cannot say Vanissimum, The greatest vanity,) yet Solomon hath found a way to express the height of it, another way conformable to that language, when he calls it, Vanitatem vanitatum, for so doth it; Canticum canticorum, The Song of songs, Deus deorum, The God of gods, Dominus dominantium, The Lord of lords; Cwli cwlorum, The Heaven of heavens, always signify the superlative, and highest degree of those things; vanity of vanities is the deepest vanity, the emptiest vanity, the veriest vanity that can be conceived. St. Augustine apprehended somewhat more in it, but upon a mistaking; for accustoming himself to a Latin copy of the Scriptures, and so lighting upon copies, that had been miswritten, he reads that, Vanitas mnitantum: O the vanity of those men that delight in vanity; he puts this lowness, this annihilation not only in the thing, but in the men themselves too. And so certainly

he might safely do; (for though, as he says, in his Retractations, his copies misled him,) yet that which he collected even by that error, was true, they that trust in vain things are as vain, as the things themselves. If St. Augustine had not his warrant to say so from Solomon here, yet he had it from his father before, who did not stop at that, when he had said man is like to vanity, but proceeds farther; surely that is without all contradiction every man, that is without all exception; in his best state, that is, without any declination, is altogether vanity4. Let no man grudge to acknowledge it of himself; the second man that ever was begot and born into this world, (and then there was world enough before him to make him great) and the first good man, had his name from vanity; Cain, the first man, had his name from possession; but the second, Abel, had his name from vacuity, from vanity, from vanishing; for it is the very word, that Solomon uses here still for vanity. Because his parents repose no confidence in Abel, or they thought that Cain was the Messias, they called him vanity. Because God knew that Abel had no long term in this world, he directed them, he suffered them to call him vanity. But therefore principally was he, and so may we, be content with the name of vanity, that so acknowledging ourselves to be but vanity, we may turn, for all our being, and all our well-being, for our essence, and existence, and subsistence, upon God in whom only we live and move and have our being; for take us at our best, make every one an Abel, and yet that is but evanescentia in nihilum, a vanishing, an evaporating. When the prophets are said to speak the motions, and notions, the visions of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord⁵, then because that was indeed nothing, (for a lie is nothing) they are said (in this very word) to speak vanity. And still where the prophets have that phrase, in the person of God Provocaverunt me vanitatibus, They have provoked God with their vanities, the Chaldee paraphrase ever expresseth it, idolis, with their idols; and idolum nihil est3, an idol, that is vanity, is nothing. Man therefore can have no deeper discouragement from inclining to the things of this world, than to be taught that they are nothing,

nor higher encouragement to cleave to God for the next, than to know that himself is nothing too. This last of ourselves, is St. Paul's humility, / am nothing1; the first of other creatures, is the prophet Isaiah's instruction, The nations are as a drop of the bucket, as the dust of the balance, the isles are as a little dust3; this was little enough; but, all nations are before him as nothing; that was much less; for the disproportion between the least thing, and nothing, is more infinite than between the least thing, and the whole world. But there is a diminution of that too, they are all less than nothing; and what is that? Vanity, in that place, nihilum, et inane, and that is as low as Solomon carries them.

But because all the imaginations of the thoughts of man's heart, are only evil continually⁹, as Moses heightens the corruption of man, and therefore men are not so much affrighted, with this returning to nothing, for they could be content to vanish at last and turn to nothing, there appears no harm to them in that, that the world comes to nothing; What care they, when they have no more use of it? and there appears an ease to them, if their souls might come to nothing too: therefore Solomon calls this world not only nothing, vanity, but affliction, and vexation of spirit. Tell a natural voluptuous man, of two sorts of torments in hell, poena damni, and poena sensm, one of privation, he shall not see God, and the other of real torments, he shall be actually tormented; the loss of the sight of God will not so much affect him, for he never saw him in his life; not in the marking of his grace, not in the glass of his creatures, and he thinks it will not much trouble him there to lack his sight, whom he never saw here; but when he comes to think of real torments, he sees some examples of them here in this life upon himself. And if he have but the toothache, he will think,that if that were to last eternally, it were an insufferable thing. And therefore Solomon affects us with that sensible addition, love not this world; Why? It is vanity, it will come to nothing: I care not for that; I will love it, as long as it is something; do not so, for it is not only vanity, but affliction, vexation too. It will be nothing at last, it ends;

but it is vexation too, that shall never end. The love of the world, is but a smoke, there is the vanity; but such a one, as puts out our eyes, there is the vexation; we do not see God here, we shall not see God hereafter.

These two words then, as to all the other parts in Solomon's anatomy, and cutting up of the world, so they do belong to that particular disposition, in this text; this reserving of riches to the owner, for his evil, and that which follows, is vanity, and vexation; but now we have passed that general consideration, there is thus much more to be considered. First an imputation laid upon the reserving, the gathering of riches: though riches be not in themselves ill, yet we are to be abstinent from an over-studious heaping of them, because naturally they are mingled with that danger, that they may be for the owner's evil: and therefore because it may come to that, it is a sickness to gather riches; and it is an evil sickness, for all sickness is not so: and it was no imaginary, but a true sickness, it was seen, it was under the sun; for that death itself, which is not seen, spiritual death in the torments of hell, is not so much thought of; this is. seen; but it was the part of a wise man to see it, Solomon saw it, There is an evil sickness, that I have seen under the sun: riches reserved to the owners thereof, for their evil. And those riches perish by evil travail; and he begetteth a son; and in his hand is nothing.

There follows a dangerous, and deadly symptom of this sickness, that the riches perish. There is an evil sickness that I have seen under the sun: riches reserved to the owners thereof, for their evil. And those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son; and in his hand is nothing.

But that will not fall into this exercise.

First then, the imputation that is generally laid upon riches, appears most in those difficulties, which in the Gospels are so often said to lie in the rich man's way to heaven: particularly, where it is said to be, as hard for a rich man to enter into heaven, as for a camel to pass a needle's eye; God can do this; but if a rich man shall stay for his salvation, till God do draw a camel through a needle's eye, he may perchance stay, till all be served, and all the places of the angels filled. St. Hierome made it not a proverb, but he found it one, and so he cites it, Dives, aut iniquus est, aut iniqui hwres^": A rich man is dishonest himself, or at least he succeeds a dishonest predecessor: proverbs have their limits, and rules have exceptions; but yet the proverb, and the rule lays a shrewd imputation, ut plurimum, for the most part it is so. It is not always so; we have a better proverb, against that proverb, The reward of humility, and the fear of God is riches, and glory, and life"; If we were able to digest, and concoct these temporal things into good nourishment; God's natural way is, and would be, to convey to us the testimony of his spiritual graces in outward and temporal benefits? as he did to the Jews in abundance of wine, and honey, and milk, and oil, and the like. He had rather we were rich, because we might advance his glory the more : at least they are equal: and any great measure of either, either of riches, or of poverty, are equal in their danger too. Et quw mulcent, et quw molestant, timeo^1*; Poverty, as well as riches, may put us from our Christian constancy; and therefore they are both prayed against, Divitias et paupertates ne dederis¹³; How riches are to be esteemed when they are compared with poverty, is another question, but how compared with heaven, is no question: we may see that by the place from whence they are said to come.

Christ is presented there in the person of Wisdom; and there it is said, Length of days, that is eternity, in her right hand, and in her left hand riches, and glory: Nolite sitire sinistram^"; Press not too much upon God's left hand for riches here, lest that custom imprint a bias in you, and turn you on the left hand here, and bring thee to God's left hand in heaven too. Briefly they have an imputation upon them, they have an ill name, as hindrances to the next life, and they have it also as traitors to their masters, that they are reserved to the hurt of their owner in this life; and then, if that vw, be well placed, Woe be unto you, that are rich, for you have received your consolation^1', what a woeful thing is it, to have received no consolation in them, but to have had harm here by them?

To proceed then, riches may do harm to their owners. It is no easy matter for a rich man, to find out the true owners of all

Epist. 160. vii. 1. ¹¹ Prov. xxii. 4. ¹⁸ Bernard.

¹⁸ Prov. xxx. ¹⁴ Bernard. ¹⁵ Luke xxvi. 24.

his riches. Thou art not owner of all, that the right owner cannot recover of thee; that all that is his by law, should be his. Certainly no rich man hath dealt much in this world, but he hath something, of which himself knows not the right owner, when he receives usury for his money, that interest is not his money, but when he receives usury again for that, there neither the interest, nor principal was his own money; he takes usury for that money for which himself was not the owner, because it was ill gotten: if thou do truly know the owner restore it to him; if after a diligent examination of thyself, thou do not know the particular owner; yet thou knowest it is none of thine, and therefore give it him, whose it was at first; both before thou hadst it, and before he from whom thou gottest it corruptly, had it; give it to Grod, in giving it to his poor, and afflicted members; give it him, and given willingly, and give it now, for that thou givest at thy death thou dost but leave by thy last will, thou dost not give; he only gives that might keep, thou givest unwillingly; howsoever they have it, by thy will, yet it is against thy will that they have it, thou givest then, but art sorry, that they to whom thou givest, that which thou givest, came so soon to it. And then Swpe infirmitatis servi officimur ^ie, We become slaves to our last sickness often; oftentimes apoplexies stupefy us, and we are dull, and fevers enrage us, and we are mad; we are in a slavery to the disease, Et servi noii testantur, says the law, Slaves have no power to make a will; testare liber; make thy will, and make it to be thy will, give it the effect, and execute thy will whilst thou art a free man, in state of health; restore that which is not thine; for even that of which thou art true owner may be reserved to thy harm; much more that, which is none of thine.

Every man may find in himself, that he hath done some sins, which he would not have done, if he had not been so rich: for there goes some cost to the most sins; his wantonness in wealth makes him do some; his wealth hath given him a confidence, that that fault would not be looked into, or that it would be bought out, if it were. Some sins we have done, because we are rich; but many more because we would be rich; and this is a

"Bernard.

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spiritual harm, the riches do their owners. And for temporal harm, if it were hard to find in our own times, examples of men, which have incurred great displeasure, undergone heavy calamities, perished in unrecoverable shipwreck, all which they had escaped, if they had not been eminently, and enormously rich; we might in ancient history both profane and holy, find such precedents enough, as Naboth was; who if he had had no such vineyard, as lay convenient for so much a greater person, might have passed for an honest and religious man to God, and a good subject to the king, without any indictment of blasphemy against either, and never have been stoned to death¹⁷. The rich merchant at sea, is afraid that every fisherman is a pirate, and the fisherman fears not him. And if we should survey the body of our penal laws, whensoever the abuse of them makes them snares and springes to entangle men, we should see that they were principally directed upon rich men; neither can rich men comfort themselves in it, that though they be subject to more storms than other men, yet they have better ground-tackling, they are better able to ride it out than other men; for it goes more to the heart of that rich merchant, which we spoke of, to cast his goods over-board, than it does to the fisherman to lose his boat: and perchance his life. Sudat pauper foris¹*; It is true the poor man's brow sweats without; Laborat intus dives, The rich man's heart bleeds within; and the poor man can sooner wipe his face, than the rich man his heart, gravius fastidio, quam ille inedia cruciatur; the rich man is worse troubled to get a stomach, than the poor man to satisfy his: and his loathing of meat, is more wearisome, than the other's desire of it. Sum up the diseases that voluptuousness by the ministery of riches imprints in the body; the battery that malice, by the provocation of riches, lays to the fortune; the sins that confidence in our riches heaps upon our souls; and we shall see, that though riches be reserved to their owners, yet it is to their harm.

As then the burden of that song in the furnace, where all creatures were called upon to bless the Lord, was still, Praise the Lord, and magnify him for ever"; and as the burden of that

¹⁷ 1 Kings xxi.

¹⁸ Bernard.

"Ver. 36.

Psalm of thanksgiving, where so many of God's miracles are recorded, is this, for his mercy endureth for ever; so the hurden of Solomon's exclamation against worldly things, is still in all these chapters, vanity, and vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit; so he adds thus much more to this particular distemper of reserving riches, naturally disposed to do us harm. That it is a sickness; now, Sanitas naturalisTM; Nature abhors sickness, and therefore this is an unnatural desire. For whether we take this phrase of Solomon, for a metaphor and comparison, that this desire of riches, is like a sickness, that it hath the pains, and the discomforts, and the dangers of a sickness, or whether we take it literally, that it is a disordering, a discomposing, a distemper of the mind, and so truly, and really a sickness, and that this sickness induceth nothing but eternal death, nothing should make us more afraid than this sickness, (for the root of all evil is the desire of money). And then if it be truly a sickness all the way, and morbus complicates, (a dropsy, and a consumption too) we seem great, but it is but a swelling, for our soul is lean; what a sad condition will there be, when their last bodily sickness, and this spiritual sickness meet together; a sick body, and a sick soul, will be but ignorant physicians, and miserable comforters to one another.

It is a sickness, and an evil sickness; and there is a weight added in that addition; for though all sickness have rationem mali, some degrees of the evil of punishment in it, yet sometimes the good purpose of God, in inflicting a sickness, and the good use of man, in mending by a sickness, overcome and weigh down that little dram, and washes away the pale tincture of evil, which is in it. There is a wholesome sickness, Et est sanitas, quw viaticum ad peccatum", health sometimes victuals us, and fuels us, and arms us for sin, and we do those things, which, if we were sick, we could not do: and then, Mala sanitas carnis, quw ducit ad infirmitatem animwTM, It is an unwholesome health of the body, that occasions the sickness of the soul.

It is true, that in bodily sickness, Tua dimicant contra te arma²³, It is a discomfortable war, when thou fightest against thyself; In

"Basil. ^£3 Bernard.

^*o Bernard.

⁸² Bernard.

ipso gemis, in quo peccasti, that that flesh in which thou hast sinned, comes to vex, and anguish thee; that thy body is become but a bottle of rheum: thy sinews but a bundle of thorns, and thy bones but a furnace of vehement ashes. But if thou canst hear God, as St. Augustine did, Ego novi unde wgrotes, Ego novi unde saneris, I know thy disease, and I know thy cure, Gratia mea sufficit, my grace shall serve thy turn. Thou shalt come to that disposition of the apostle too; Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, because when I am weak, then am I strong*4: when thou art come to an apprehension of thy own weakness, thou comest also to a recourse to him, in whom only is thy saving health and recovery. But this sickness of gathering those riches which are reserved for our evil, comes not to that; it comes to the sickness, but not to the physic. In small diseases (saith St. Basil,) we go to the physician's house; in greater diseases, we send for the physician to our house; but in violent diseases, in the stupefaction of an apoplexy, in the damp of a lethargy, in the furnace of a pleurisy; we have no sense, no desire of a physician at all. When this inordinate love of riches begins in us, we have some tenderness of conscience, and we consult with God's ministers: after we admit the reprehensions of God's ministers when they speak to our consciences; but at last, the habit of our sin hath seared us up, and we never find that it is we, that the preacher means; we find that he touches others, but not us. Our wit, and pur malice is awake, but our conscience is asleep; we can make a sermon a libel against others, and cannot find a sermon in a sermon, to ourselves. It is a sickness, and an evil sickness.

Now this is not such a sickness, as we have only read of, and no more. It concerns us not only so, as the memory of the sweat, of which we do rather wonder at the report, than consider the manner, or the remedies against it. Those divers plagues which God inflicted upon Pharaoh, for withholding his people; that devouring pestilence, which God struck David's kingdom with for numbering his people; that destruction which God kindled in Sennacherib's army for oppressing his people; these, because God hath represented them, in so clear, and so true a

"2 Cor. xii. 10.

glass as his word, we do in a manner see them. Things in other stories we do but hear; things in the Scriptures we see: the Scriptures are as a room wainscotted with looking-glass, wo see all at onco. But this evil sickness of reserving riches to our own evil, is plainer to be seen; because it is daily round about us, daily within us, and in our consciences, and experiences. There are sins, that are not evident, not easily discerned; and therefore David annexes a schedule to his prayer after all, Ab occultis meis munda me, saith David, There are sins, which the difference of religion, makes a sin, or no sin; we know it to be a sin, to abstain from coming to church, our adversaries are made believe it is a time to come. There are middle-men, that when our church appoints coming, and receiving, and another church forbids both, they will do half of both; they will come, and not receive; and so be friends with both. There are sins recorded in the Scriptures, in which it is hard, for any to find the name, and the nature, what the sin was; How doth the school vex itself, to find out what was the nature of the sin of the angels, or what was the name of the sin of Adam? There are actions recorded in the Scriptures, in which by God's subsequent punishment, there appears sin to have been Committed, and yet to have considered the action alone, without the testimony of God's displeasure upon it; a natural man would not easily find out a sin. Balaam was solicited to come, and curse God's people; he refused, he consulted with God*⁵: God bids him go, but follow such instructions as he should give him after; and yet the wrath of God was kindled, because he went. Moses seems to have pursued God's commandment exactly, in drawing water out of the rock", and yet God says, Because you believed me not, you shall not bring this congregation into that land of promise. There are sins hard to be seen, out of the nature of man, because man naturally is not watchful upon his particular actions, for if he were so, he would escape great sins; when we see land, we are not much afraid of a stone; when a man sees his small sins, there is not so much danger of great. But some sins we see not out of a natural blindness in ourselves, some we see not out of a natural dimness in the sin itself. But this sickly sin, this sinful

sickness, of gathering riches, is so obvious, so manifest to every man's apprehension, as that the books of moral men, and philosophers are as full of it as the Bible. But yet the Holy G,host, (as he doth always, even in moral counsels) exceeds the philosophers; for whereas they place this sickness in gathering unnecessary riches injuriously; the Holy Ghost in this place extends it further, to a reserving of those riches; that when we have sinned in the getting of them, we sin still in the not restoring of them. But to thee, who shouldest repent the ill getting; Veniet tempus, quo non dispensesse, pwnitebit, there will come a time when thou shalt repent the having kept them: Hoc certum est, Ego sum sponsor, Of this I dare be the surety (saith St. Basil) but we can leave St. Basil out of the bond; we have a better surety and undertaker, the Holy Ghost in Solomon; so that this evil sickness may be easily seen, it is made manifest enough to us all, by precedent from God, by example of others, by experience in ourselves.

To see this then, is an easy, a natural thing; but to see it so, as to condemn it, and avoid it, this is a wise man's flight; this was Solomon's flight. The wise man seeth the plague, and shunneth it; therein consists the wisdom. But for the fool, when he sees a thief, he runneth with him⁸⁷; when he sees others thrive by ill getting, and ill keeping, he runs with them, he takes the same course as they do. Beloved, it is not intended, that true and heavenly wisdom may not consist with riches: Job, and the patriarchs, abounded with both; and our pattern in this place, Solomon himself, saith of himself, that he was great, and increased above all that were before him in Jerusalemand yet his wisdom remained with him. The poor man and the rich are in heaven together: and to show us how the rich should use the poor, Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom; the rich should succour and relieve, and defend the poor in their bosoms. But when our Saviour declares a wisdom belonging to riches, (as in the parable of the unjust steward²⁹) he places not this wisdom, in the getting, nor in the holding of riches, but only in the using of them; make you friends of your riches, that they may receive

you into everlasting habitations. There is no simony in heaven, that a man can buy so much as a doorkeeper's place in the triumphant church: there is no bribery there, to fee ushers for access; but God holds that ladder there, whose foot stands upon the earth here, and all those good works, which are put upon the lowest step of that ladder here, that is, that are done in contemplation of him, they ascend to him, and descend again to us. Heaven and earth are as a musical instrument; if you touch a string below, the motion goes to the top: any good done to Christ's poor members upon earth, affects him in heaven; and as he said, Quid mepersequeris? Saul, Saul, why perseeutest thou me? So he will say, Venite benedicti, pavistis me, visitastis me. This is the wisdom of their use; but the wisdom of their getting and keeping, is to see, that it is an evil sickness to get too laboriously, or to reserve too gripingly, things which tend naturally to the owner's evil: for, therefore in that parable doth Christ call all their riches generally, universally, mammonas iniquitatis, riches of iniquity, not that all that they had was ill got (that is not likely in so great a company) but that whatsoever, and howsoever they had got it, and were become true owners of it, yet they were riches of iniquity; because that is one iniquity, to possess much, and not distribute to the poor; and it is another iniquity, to call those things riches, which are only temporal, and so to defraud heavenly graces, and spiritual treasure of that name, that belongs only to them; and the greatest iniquity of all is towards ourselves. To take those riches to our heart, which Christ calls the thorns that choke the good seeds³⁰, and the apostle calls temptations, and snares, and foolish, and noisome lusts, which drown men in perdition, and in destruction⁸¹, and which the wise man hath showed us here, to be reserved to the owners for their evil. To return to our beginning, and make an end; heaven is a feast, and heaven is a treasure: if ye prepare not for his feast, by being worthy guests at his table, if you embrace not his treasure, by being such merchants as give all for his pearl; another feast, and another treasure are expressed, and heightened in two such words, as never any tongue of any author, but the Holy Ghost himself spoke; Inebriabit absinthio, There is the feast, you

³⁰ Matt. xiii. 22. ³¹ 1 Tim. vi. 9.

shall be drunk with wormwood, you shall taste nothing but bitter affliction, and that shall make you reel, for you shall find in your affliction no rest for your souls. And for the treasure, Thesaurizabis iram dei; You shall treasure up wrath against the day of wrath³⁸; and this will be an exchequer ever open, and never exhausted. But use the creatures of God, as creatures, and not as God, with a confidence in them, and you shall find juge convivium, in a good conscience, and thesauros absconditos, all the hid treasures of wisdom and knowledge³⁸; you shall know how to be rich in this world by an honest getting of riches, and how to be rich in the next world by a christianly use of those riches here.