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…

So that for feeding his greedy eye upon a little vanishing heap of yellow earth, his heart is continually haunted with such vexing Harpies, I mean, wasting cares and false fears, that dry up even his vital moisture, and cut his very heart-strings in ^apieces. Good-fellow meetings and Ale-house revellings are the drunkards delight: but all the while he sits at it, he is, perhaps, in a bodily fear of the Puritan-Constable: when towards night he goes grunting homewards, he becomes a gazing and ^*laughing▪ stock to children in the streets; no sooner comes he reeling into his own house, but he wrings fresh cries, and tears of shame and grief from his wife and family; for the reproach, beggary and misery he brings upon them. And as he goes on in this drunken good-fellowship, and takes a pride and pleasure in pouring in of strong drink; there many times insensibly grow upon him many loathsome diseases and deformities of body, Rheums, Dropsies, Palsies, a fearful face, spewing, falling, and never rising again; sometimes not even out of a little gutter, that would scarce choke a child. The lascivious wanton that wanders in the twilight, in the evening in the black and dark night, after the strange woman; besides the dart which sticks fast, and rankles in his Liver; meets in the mean time with rottenness in his bones, a consumption of his marrow, a wound, and dishonour, and reproach, that shall not be wiped away. The boisterous aspiring Nimrod, out of a ⟨p. 173⟩gluttonous desire of grasping offices and honours, screws himself vijs & modis, into some high place as his only Paradise; and when he is gotten up, dances full merrily in golden fetters upon his slippery standing: but couldest thou see into his inside, thou shouldest behold his heart miserably fretting and vexing it self; raging with many passionate distempers, for the indignation of good men; contempt of inferiors; thwarting of competitors; envy of compeers; underminings of counter-factionists; jealousies of Princes, &c. How many great mens hearts have burst with the blasting frowns of a Kings forehead? Nay, and which is a Bedlam misery upon the ambitious man; he is many times more grieved for an affront of some grand opposite; because he cannot have his will of this or that man, that stands in his way;