The divine life in three treatises

6. There is no stability or fixedness in your thoughts, if God be not in them. They are like a boat upon the Ocean, tossed up and down with winds and waves: The mutable uncertain creatures can yield no rest or settlement to your minds. You are troubled about many things; and the more you think on them, and have to do with them, the more are you troubled: But you forget the One thing Necessary, and fly from the Eternal Rock, on which you must build if ever you will be established. While the Creature is in your thought instead of God, you will be one day deluded with its unwholesome pleasure, and the next day feel it gripe you at the heart: One day it will seem your happiness, and the next you will wish you had never known it: That which seemeth the only comfort of your lives this year, may the next year make you aweary of your lives. One day you are impatiently desiring and seeking it, as if you could not live without it: and the next day, or ere long you ⟨p. 216⟩are impatiently desiring to be rid of it: You are now taking in your pleasant morsels, and drinking down your delicious draughts, and jovially sporting it with your inconsiderate companions: But how quickly will you be repenting of all this, and complaining of your folly, and vexing your selves, that you took not warning, and made not a wiser choice in time? The creature was never made to be your end, or rest, or happiness: and therefore you are but like a man in a wilderness or a maze, that may go and go but knoweth not whither, and findeth no end, till you come home to God, who only is your proper end, and make him the Lord and life and pleasure of your thoughts.

6. There is no stability or fixedness in your thoughts, if God be not in them. They are like a boat upon the Ocean, tost up and down with winds and waves: The mutable uncertain creatures can yield no rest or settlement to your minds. You are troubled about many things; and the more you think on them, and have to do with them, the more are you troubled: But you forget the One thing Necessary, and fly from the Eternal Rock, on which you must build if ever you will be established. While the Creature is in your thought instead of God, you will be one day deluded with its unwholesome pleasure, and the next day feel it gripe you at the heart: One day it will seem your happiness, and the next you will wish you had never known it: That which seemeth the only comfort of your lives this year, may the next year make you aweary of your lives. One day you are impatiently desiring and seeking it, as if you could not live without it: and the next day, or ere long you