The crucifying of the world

2. As you Love your present peace and comfort, see that you love not, but Crucify the world. It doth but delude you first, and disquiet you afterward: Like wind in your bowels, which can tear and torment you, but cannot nourish you. And if God do love you with a special Love, he will be sure to wean you from the world, though to your sorrow. If you do provoke him to lay wormwood on the breasts, and to hedge up your forbidden way with thorns, when you find the smart and bitterness, you may thank your selves. It is the remnant of our folly, and our backsliding nature that is still looking back to the world which we have forsaken, that is the cause of those successive afflictions which we undergo. Did you Love the creature less, it would vex you less; but if you will needs set your minds upon them, and be pleasing your worldly sensual desires, God will turn loose those very creatures upon you, and make them his scourges for the recovery of your wits, & the reducing of your mis-led revolting souls. Are you taken up with the hopes of a more plentiful estate? and think you are got into a thriving way? How soon can God blast and break your expectations? By the death of your cattle, the decay of trading, the false-dealing of those you trust, the breaking and impoverishing of them, by contentious ⟨p. 140⟩neighbours vexing you with Law▪ suits; by corrupted witnesses, or Lawyers that will sell you for a little gain; by ill servants; by unthrifty children; by thieves, or soldiers, or the raging flames; by restraining the dew of heaven, and causing your land to deny its increase, and make you complain that you have laboured in vain. How many ways hath he in a day or an hour to scatter all the heap of wealth that you have been gathering, and to show you that by sad experience, which you might have known before at easier rates? At the least, if he meddle not with any thing that you have, yet how quickly can he lay his hand upon your selves, and lay you in sickness to groan under your pain and sin together; and then what comfort will you have in the world? when head ache's, and back ache's, and nothing can ease you: When pain and languishing make you weary of day and of night, and weary of every place, and weary of your best diet, your finest clothes, your merriest companions: Where then is the sweetness and beauty of the world?

2. As you Love your present peace and comfort, see that you love not, but C•ucifie the world. It doth but delude you first, and disquiet you afterward: Like wind in your bowels, which can tear and torment you, but cannot nourish you. And if God do love you with a special Love, he will be sure to wean you from the world, though to your sorrow. If you do provoke him to lay wormwood on the breasts, and to hedge up your forbidden way with thorns, when you find the smart and bitterness, you may thank your selves. It is the remnant of our folly, and our backsliding nature that is still looking back to the world which we have forsaken, that is the cause of those successive afflictions which we undergo. Did you Love the creature less, it would vex you less; but if you will needs set your minds upon them, and be pleasing your worldly sensual desires, God will turn loose those very creatures upon you, and make them his scourges for the recovery of your wits, & the reducing of your mis-led revolting souls. Are you taken up with the hopes of a more plentifull estate? and think you are got into a thriving way? How soon can God blast and break your expectations? By the death of your cattle, the decay of trading, the false-dealing of those you trust, the breaking and impoverishing of them, by contentious