Some general directions for a comfortable walking with God delivered in the lecture at…Some generall directions for a comfortable walking with God deliuered in the lecture at…

2. Of purity. The edge and relish of carnal joy, is ever much rebated and embittered with many sour sauces, and envenomed mixtures; impatience of delay, difficulty and danger in attainment, unanswerableness to fore-conceits and expectation, many secret terrors, fretting jealousies, discontented indignations against their discontinuance and vanishing, &c. And besides, those three ensuing individual stings, which to an enlightened conscience as inseparably and sensibly dog them at the heels, as a shadow the body in the Sun-shine; cut the very throat, and burst the heart of all worldly pleasures. 1. One of them is, as it were, natural, immediately attending all earthly mirth; more melancholy and heavy-heartednesse afterward. For as the Rivers of sweet water run their course to die in the salt sea; so the honey of all earthly pleasure, ever endeth in the gall of grief. Voluptuousness even in her dearest minions, ordinarily expires with anguish and anger that it is gone. The transitory flashes of sensual delight, are like the light of a candle, which leave at the close a noisome vexing snuff behind.¹ And that sweetness which sensualists swallow down so greedily, turns to gravel in their guts, and at farewell fills their spirit with the return of a more heavy melancholic humour, then before the receipt. 2. The other I call a temporary sting: for all the ways of worldly ^apleasure are strewed also with needles and nettles, that I may so speak, which ever and anon prick and sting her darlings, as they pluck her fading flowers. So that at best they are but like Bears robbing a Wasps nest, who ravenously rifle the ⟨p. 172⟩combs, and with much ado suck out a little honey, but in the mean time, are soundly stung and swollen about head for their painful pleasure. In their several walks of a fools paradise, they hunt both unreasonably and unseasonably after transitory delights; but they are even pained, and payed home with a witness in the very pursuit. For instance: The covetous man accounts worldly wealth, and an •oard of gold, his heaven upon earth; but in heaping it together, his heart is woefully rent and torn asunder with carking, thoughtfulness, restless rooting in the earth, anxious and endless casting about and forecasting: In a word; with much care in gathering, more fear in keeping, and most grief in parting from it.