The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

When men prosper in the world, their •inds are lifted up with their estates; and •hey can hardly believe that they are indeed so ill while they feel themselves so •ell; and that so much misery is joined with •o much content and pleasure. They cannot •aste the bitterness of their sin, and Gods displeasure, while the sweetness of worldly delights & honours is in their mouths. The Rich •an in Luk. 16. its like would have given […] man but an unwelcome entertainment, •hat had come to tell him that within a few days or years he should lie in hell, and not •e able to get a drop of water to cool his •ongue! What need we doubt of that, when his five Brethren that he left on earth behind him, would not be persuaded (to know their danger of those flames, and to use the necessary means to scape them) though one had come to them from the dead! Luk. 16.31. You plead against their feeling, when you tell them of their misery, when they feel prosperity: Their fleshly appetite and sense, which is in them the reigning faculty, doth tell them they are well and happy: and that which must confute this, and tell them they are miserable, must be an inward sense of the sin and diseases of their souls, and a foreseeing ⟨p. 446⟩Faith that must look before the• unto eternity, and fetch its proofs fro• the word of God, and fetch its motive from another world: And alas, they hav• no such inward sense, nor no such Faith […] can prevail against their their sensual feel•ing. And therefore it is a matter of lamentable difficulty to make a prospering sinne• well acquainted with his misery. He […] drunken with fleshly pleasures and contentments: And when the drink is in a mans head, you can hardly make him sensible of his misery, though he be a beggar or a prisoner, or were to die within a week The Devil is therefore willing to reach hi servants as full a cup of prosperity as h can, that their drunkenness may keep them from the true use of their reason; Fo if they once come to themselves, they wil come home to God. When misery brought the Prodigal to himself, he resolveth presently of going to his Father,