A Christian Directory

§. 10. Direct. 10. The world and every creature in it, which thou daily seest, and which revealeth to ¹thee the great Creator, might be enough to keep thy Thoughts from idleness. If Sun and Moon and Stars, if Heaven and Earth and all therein be not enough to employ thy thoughts, let thy idleness have some excuse. I know thou wilt say, that it is upon some of these things▪ that thou dost employ them: Yea: but dost thou not first destroy, and mortify, and make nonsense of that on which thou meditatest? Dost thou not first separate it from God, who is the life, and glory, and end, and meaning of every creature? Thou killest it, and turnest out the soul, and thinkest only on the Corps! or on the Creature made another thing, as food for thy sensual desires! As the Kite thinketh on the Birds and Chickens, to devour them to satisfy her greedy appetite: Thus you can think of all Gods works, so far as they accommodate your flesh. But the World is Gods book, which he set man at first to read; and every Creature is a Letter, or Syllable, or Word, or Sentence, more or less, declaring the name and will of God. There you may behold his wonderful Almightiness, his unsearchable Wisdom, his unmeasurable Goodness, mercy and compassions; and his singular regard of the sons of men! Though the ungodly, proud, and carnal wits, do but play with, and study the shape, and comeliness, and order of the Letters, Syllables and Words, without understanding the sense and end; yet those that with holy and illuminated minds come thither to behold the footsteps of the Great and Wise and bountiful Creator, may find not only matter to employ, but to profit and delight their thoughts; They may be rapt up by the things that are seen, into the Sacred admirations, reverence, Love and praise, of the glorious Maker of all who is unseen; And thus to the sanctified all things will be sanctified; and the study of common things will be to them Divine and Holy.

§. 10. Direct. 10. The world and every creature in it, which thou daily seest, and which revealeth to ¹thee the great Creator, might be enough to keep thy Thoughts from idleness. If Sun and Moon and Stars, if Heaven and Earth and all therein be not enough to employ thy thoughts, let thy idleness have some excuse. I know thou wilt say, that it is upon some of these things▪ that thou dost employ them: Yea: but dost thou not first destroy, and mortifie, and make nonsense of that on which thou meditatest? Dost thou not first separate it from God, who is the life, and glory, and end, and meaning of every creature? Thou killest it, and turnest out the soul, and thinkest only on the Corps! or on the Creature made another thing, as food for thy sensual desires! As the Kite thinketh on the Birds and Chickens, to devour them to satisfie her greedy appetite: Thus you can think of all Gods works, so far as they accommodate your flesh. But the World is Gods book, which he set man at first to read; and every Creature is a Letter, or Syllable, or Word, or Sentence, more or less, declaring the name and will of God. There you may behold his wonderful Almightiness, his unsearchable Wisdom, his unmeasurable Goodness, mercy and compassions; and his singular regard of the sons of men! Though the ungodly, proud, and carnal wits, do but play with, and study the shape, and comeliness, and order of the Letters, Syllables and Words, without understanding the sense and end; yet those that with holy and illuminated minds come thither to behold the footsteps of the Great and Wise and bountiful Creator, may find not only matter to employ, but to profit and delight their thoughts; They may be rapt up by the things that are seen, into the Sacred admirations, reverence, Love and praise, of the glorious Maker of all who is unseen; And thus to the sanctified all things will be sanctified; and the study of common things will be to them Divine and Holy.