True contentment in the gain of godliness, with its self-sufficiency A meditation on 1.…True contentment in the gaine of godlines, with its self-sufficiencie A meditation on 1.…

Godliness alone is able to cause true Contentment: because Godliness alone bringeth man home unto God, out of whom true Contentment can not be had. For the soul of man, as ^ait beareth the image of God; so ^bnothing can satisfy it, but he whose image it beareth. ⟨p. 64⟩^cOur Soul, saith Augustine well, was created as by God, so for God, and is therefore never quiet till it rest in God. As ^dman fell at first into this restlessness by falling away from God; so ^*he can not be recovered of it, but by returning to him again. It is with mans soul in this regard, as it was with Noah's Dove in the Deluge. As ^ethe Dove, after she left the Ark, found no rest for the sole of her foot in the wide world, being then all a-float, till she betook her again thither, from whence before she came forth: So neither can man, fallen from God, find any sure rest for the foot of his soul in the whole world beside, till he come back to him again ^ffrom whom it came at the first. But it is Godliness alone, that bringeth man home unto God; that tieth and knitteth the soul fast unto God; whereof ^gReligion, say some, hath its name; that findeth rest and repose for the whole man in God, which can no where else be found. That which Solomon, out of his own experience, confirmeth unto us, who ^hhaving ranged abroad through all those creatures and courses, under the cope of heaven, wherein any hope of contentment seemed to show forth it self, is in conclusion enforced to retire back again to God,