the joy of the just with the signs of such. A discourse tending to…the ioy of the iust vvith the signes of such. A discourse tending to…

But to let that pass, it is not so much the light of their present, as the consideration of their former estate that maketh good men so sad. They are not heavy, because they are now holy, but^s because they were not sooner such: that they have spent, or mis-spent rather so much time, in an unholy course of life, which now seeing their own folly, they seriously repent of, and are sincerely sorry for. Or if their grief arise, as it may well also, from the sight of the present; it is because they are no holier than they are. ^tThe godly, saith one, are not heavy therefore, because they are holy; but therefore are they heavy, ⟨p. 37⟩because they are no more holy; because they are not so holy yet as they would be: because they see so much^u unholiness yet abide by them. As^x the love of money maketh men think that they have never enough of it; and the greedy desire of having still more, makes them not regard or take notice of what already they have. You shall hear the rich oft complain that they are^y but very poor men; and they are indeed in some respect as they say. So the great love of godliness, and the greedy desire of it, and that even out of the comfort and sweetness that they have felt and found in it, doth oft so possess the hearts and minds of the godly, that it withholdeth them from seeing and taking notice of what they have, and maketh them many times pensive, because they have so little^z as they imagine, though being more than ordinarily stored with it, of that which so earnestly they desire. Nor ought that heaviness of theirs therefore be imputed to be holiness, which either the true or supposed want of it produceth. It is a very unequal thing, to charge holiness with that that unholiness is the cause of, and much more to challenge the godly for that, which themselves and such as they be, are the cause of.