The divine life in three treatises

7. Lastly, consider that it is not desirable or suitable to our state, to have too much of our comfort by any creature: Not only because it is most pure and sweet which is most immediately from God; but also because we are very prone to overlove the Creature; and if it should but seem to be very commodious to us, by serving our necessities or desires, it would seem the more amiable, and therefore be the stronger snare: The work of mortification doth much consist in the annihilation or deadness of all the Creatures as to any power to draw away our hearts from God, or to entangle us and detain us from our duty. And the more excellent and lovely the creature appeareth to us, the less it is dead to us, or we to it; and the more will it be able to hinder or ensnare us.

When you have well considered all these things, I suppose you will admire the wisdom of God in leaving you under this kind of trial, and weaning you from every creature, and teaching you by his providence as well as by his word, to Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?] And you will see that it's no great wonder that corrupted souls, that live in other sins, should be guilty of this unfaithfulness to their friends: and that he that dare unthankfully trample upon the unspeakable kindness of ⟨p. 321⟩the Lord, should deal unkindly with the best of men. You make no great wonder at other kind of sins, when you see the world continually commit them; why then should you make a greater or a stranger matter of this than of the rest? Are you better than God? Must unfaithfulness to you be made more heinous, than that unfaithfulness to him, which yet you daily see and sleight? The least wrong to God is a thousandfold more than the greatest that can be done to you, as such. Have you done that for your nearest friend, which God hath done for him and you, and all men? Their obligations to you are nothing in comparison of their great and manifold obligations to God.

When you have well considered all these things, I suppose you will admire the wisdome of God in leaving you under this kind of tryal, and weaning you from every creature, and teaching you by his providence as well as by his word, to Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?] And you will see that it's no great wonder that corrupted souls, that live in other sins, should be guilty of this unfaithfulness to their friends: and that he that dare unthankfully trample upon the unspeakable kindness of